


The Working Girl's Guide to Taming Your Imaginary Boyfriend

by Pollydoodles



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-07-26 03:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7558375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane, who was only trying to help - honest - inadvertently stitches Darcy up. <br/>Darcy, who's never been known to back down from a challenge, runs with it. Awkwardly. </p><p>Bucky Barnes doesn't know what's about to hit him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Darcy scowled. 

It had been a so-so sort of day at best, thus far, and now it was veering wildly into an absolutely terrible day from which there was likely no return. 

She’d not been able to find a pair of matching socks - where the hell they all went to was beyond her - and so her feet wiggled in one ankle sock and one long sock she’d rolled down and hoped for the best. She’d managed to drop a large spoonful of yoghurt down her shirt when, after cleaning it up as best she could, she’d promptly dropped the very next spoonful over the same spot. 

It was not, Darcy was starting to think, her day. 

She was in the lab as usual, happily - more or less - typing up nigh-on illegible notes from Jane and minding her own goddamn business, when Scott wandered over. 

Scott, he of the blond hair and dark brown eyes, the gorgeous Stark Industries lab assistant from the lab across the hall who had occupied her thoughts for a month and her evenings for approximately three days. Scott, who had told her last week, with a shy smile on his lips and an awkward brush of the hand through his hair, that actually he thought they worked much better as friends. 

Darcy choked and managed to turn it into a sort-of cough, and slapped a hand over her right breast to cover the yoghurt stain of which she’d not been successful in getting rid. Scott gave her a slightly alarmed look as her hand whipped up and over her breast, and Darcy threw him a tight smile in return, but did not move her hand an inch.

“So, Darcy.” 

His tone was friendly and his words slow and precise, though his stance was awkward and something shifting his his dark eyes that told her exactly how uncomfortable he was, even though he’d approached her workbench and there had been nothing compelling him to do so. Certainly nothing about Darcy had been begging him to approach so he could humiliate her again, though this time in front of both other work colleagues and her boss. 

“How's things?”

His voice was bright and showed approximately none of the misgivings Darcy had when she looked back at him. 

How, she thought as she tilted her head up to look at him square in the eye with a little more confidence than she really felt, are things since you dumped me for the hot blonde on reception who looks like she just walked out of Swedish Vogue? How are things indeed. The shame and embarrassment of it burned through her, followed quickly by a hot second wave that she was even spending time feeling embarrassed about some stupid man anyway.

The result was an exceedingly pink Darcy, and that frustrated her beyond reason too. 

“Yeah, everything's great. Super great.” She babbled, ducking her head down and away from him, staring at her laptop screen so hard she was seeing two of it and wishing hard that the ground would just open up and swallow her. Or possibly him, either scenario would work just as well. She underscored the date she'd scrawled in near illegible handwriting at the top of her notepad viciously, and the pen tore the paper. 

“Having a really great ... Day.” 

Darcy jabbed her pen into the hole she’d made in the paperwork, hand still clutching at her breast as she angled her body forward a little, awkward and uncomfortable, trying to somehow make her stance look more natural than it was, and still keep up the pretence of there not being yoghurt all over her shirt like a child. 

“Oh cool. I mean, I just wanted to say like, you know, no hard feelings right?”

His eyes were on her, and she could sense that he was working on her in some desperation, though whether it be for what he’d perceived as her benefit, or to alleviate his own guilt, she couldn’t say. She wrinkled her nose at him, mind working overtime as it guessed and second guessed at possible motives for him to be stood in front of her desk and shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. 

She settled on the need for him to know she was okay with the way he’d treated her. Darcy thought that, on the one hand, he had no obligation towards her. The rational side of her brain, however small it might be, told her calmly that it had only been three dates, three simple evenings and absolutely no promise of anything else. 

The slightly less rational side of her screamed that he should only leave the lab with his balls in her hand, that she was just as attractive as anyone else and frankly a damn sight more intelligent than the girl on reception who seemed, at times, to struggle with being able to hit the switch for the doors at the appropriate moment. 

Not very feminist of you, Lewis, the angel on her shoulder reprimanded her disapprovingly. The devil on the other side made a rude gesture in response. 

Darcy, chancing a glance down at the hand covering her breast and realising that the others in the lab were sneaking odd looks at her over their shoulders, let her hand drop with a deep sigh. Scott coughed and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, eyes firmly on the desk top between them. 

“Why would I have hard feelings?” She asked brightly instead, squashing all internal voices and tearing off the useless page of her notepad and screwing it up, passing the ball of paper from hand to hand to give her something else to focus on than the thought of how Scott might look if he was strung from the ceiling by his tie. 

Who wears a tie in a lab? She thought briefly. That’s got to be one of the most unhygienic things one could possibly do. Think of all the horrible places it could dangle, the nasty little germs it could pick up and spread around. Yeuch. 

Anyway - hard feelings, she snorted under her breath. Even though we went on three dates, she considered further, mentally skewering the pen through his right eyeball and wondering roughly how much trouble she’d be in if she actually managed to do it; and I was totally prepared to sleep with you until you turned out to be the world's biggest jackass. And even though you're a jackass I still really like you ... Ugh. 

“Oh, well, that's cool.” He said, with what felt like palpable relief. Darcy glared at him before he looked at her properly and she dropped the scowl into a smile with some difficulty. “You know, you're a cool girl, Darcy.” 

Scott smiled, a wide sparkling smile that seemed to hit her somewhere in the back of the knees, and she melted despite herself. His dirty blond hair flopped into his eyes as his head tilted and he looked over at her shyly from the other side of the desk. Darcy’s hands gripped at the curve of the bench and she leaned forward slightly towards him without thinking. Jane, approaching unseen from behind, jabbed her in the ribs surreptitiously with a pen and Darcy yelped.

“Her boyfriend knows that.” Jane said pointedly and Darcy turned to her in alarm. 

She gestured at the other girl, trying to keep her movements minimal with her back turned to Scott. The gestures said, quite plainly, what-the-hell-are-you-doing. Jane simply raised an eyebrow in return and tilted her head meaningfully towards the man stood at the other side of the desk. Darcy fought the sudden deep and frankly primal urge to throttle her boss. 

“Oh you have a boyfriend now?” 

Darcy, back still turned to the man, felt a sudden impulse flash through her veins to twist her body and lean across the workbench to smack Scott in the face at the surprise in his tone. Like it was impossible, as though by him choosing someone else, that the universe had decreed Darcy Lewis undateable. 

“Yes she does.” Jane said firmly, and Darcy couldn’t quite work out which of the pair of them she’d prefer to murder first. She mused quickly that a lab explosion would probably absolve her of blame and also kill the proverbial two birds with one stone, but then considered that it would likely result in more than just the two deaths she desired. That and it seemed unfairly quick compared to the slow twist of the screw she was having to experience. 

Darcy turned back to Scott, swallowing.

“Um, yes. Yes I do. He's great.”

“Oh that's great!” He looked... Relieved. And Darcy wanted to punch him. Not necessarily in the face. Her eyes slipped southwards and she gripped at the pen she’d discarded on the desk, mentally painting a target over his crotch and wondering if she had the skill to hit it. 

Then she considered that she wouldn’t be all that bothered if it took her one or two goes to get close. 

“So, like, where did you guys meet?”

Really, she thought. You really want to know that? What kind of a monster are you, Scott? 

“Oh, um. Well.” She stuttered, blushing hard and trying to focus on the task at hand. The awkward, uncomfortable task that Jane had pushed her into. Darcy tossed the pen from one hand to the other and back again, neatly missing it completely on the second throw and having to drop to her knees and fumble for it on the floor before popping back up behind the desk, red faced and a little sweaty.

“Here.” Darcy managed, setting the pen down on the table in front of her and deliberately not looking Scott in the eye as she spoke. He raised an eyebrow, not so subtly glancing around the room at the three other girls who worked there, and Jeff the janitor. Darcy followed his gaze around the room with an internal wince, and Jeff raised a hand and waved at her. 

She waved back faintly. 

“I mean, here at work. In the tower. The Avengers tower.” She babbled, turning back to Scott after throwing a desperate look over at Jane who had by that point conveniently disappeared back to her own work, leaving Darcy strung high and dry to try and worm her way back out of the grave she’d been dug. He gave her a sympathetic smile and she realised that he was, in no way, buying it.

Sod that. No way was Scott freaking Williams getting away with looking at her like she was some special case who’d made up an imaginary boyfriend to help ease the pain of being dumped by him. Even if that was kind of the case. Actually, quite literally the case, albeit with a deft assist from Jane, who was currently being demoted from the position of best friend. 

“Oh that's him now!” She said, inspiration striking suddenly. Darcy threw out a hand, pointing wildly at two figures passing by the glass doors of the lab. Scott turned and appraised them.

“Captain America?” He said doubtfully.

“Wait, what? No. No - the other guy.” Darcy corrected quickly, a deep pink flush rising steadily from the base of her throat, up her neck to the tips of her ears. She dug the fingernails of her left hand into the soft skin on the palm of her right, and prayed for forgiveness from the God of Dating. 

He turned back to her with a concerned expression. “You're dating the Winter Soldier?”

The God of Dating apparently wanted her as a human sacrifice today. Which Darcy considered supremely unfair considering it was Jane who’d gotten her into this ridiculous mess in the first place. 

“What?” She scrambled for her glasses and shoved them on her face, just about catching a small groan in be back of her throat as she realised that the other man was indeed the glowering slab of muscle and metal that was James Buchanan Barnes. 

A man who, in the entire time they had both co-existed in the Avengers Tower, had yet to say one word to her. He had no real reason to do so, Darcy being a hanger-on at best and a total non-entity insofar as the man was concerned at worst. 

She slid the glasses of her nose and gulped, putting them down carefully on the table. Nothing to do but style it out. “Yep.” She said, drawing it out and popping the P loudly, crossing her fingers behind her back in a vain hope that she wouldn’t be immediately struck down for asserting such an awful lie. 

“That's my... Boyfriend.”

\------

“Buck?”

Steve paused, and tilted his head to one side, staring over Bucky’s shoulder. His eyes narrowed and a look of confusion danced over his face. 

“Yeah.” The other man answered with disinterest, taking in Steve’s expression rapidly and turning his attention back to the small device he’d been given. A phone, they called it. Bucky didn’t think it was much of a phone. Too small, too light, far too bright - and he couldn’t see a cord or an antennae anywhere on it. 

“Why's that girl pointing at you?” Steve said slowly. 

“Huh?” Bucky jerked his head up and stared through the glass at the girl Steve had been talking about. A short curvy thing with a mass of dark curls and a slightly hunted look on her face. She appeared to have a large stain over her right breast. 

Bucky frowned, looking at the petite brunette. Now she was pushing a pair of bright blue glasses onto her face. 

He shook his head. “No idea.”


	2. Chapter Two

There are some people who, when faced with the sort of awkward situation that Darcy had been inadvertently been placed into, would have laughed and corrected all present parties. Those people would probably be termed ‘adults’. Then there are others who might have rolled with it, in a confident fashion, and turned the whole conversation into a joke. She wasn’t completely sure what those people would be called, but it didn’t really matter because she wasn’t one of them. 

And then there was Darcy Lewis. 

Darcy, whose lack of confidence she overruled daily with a bolshy overtone that she hoped convinced people - including herself - that she was actually a capable adult who was able to go about life in a perfectly normal way. 

She was entirely aware of the irony in that as she hauled the lab door open to approach a man to whom she’d not yet been formally introduced, with the express intention of making it appear to a man to whom she wished fervently she’d never been formally introduced, that she was in fact dating the first man. 

There was a small part of Darcy that piped up to comment that she really was the only one making life hard for herself. The larger part of Darcy that was propelling her towards James Barnes agreed, but did absolutely nothing to halt her feet. 

\------

“She’s coming over, Buck.”

“Yeah, I can see that, Steve.”

\------

“Hi.” Darcy said brightly, with significantly more confidence than she felt inside, coming to a stop in front of him and peering upwards. She forced a grin onto her face that she was aware looked unnatural, but hoped stopped short at least of full-on crazy. 

“Hello?” Came the answer, after a long pause. 

“I, um,” Darcy shot a quick look over her shoulder to find both Scott and Jane staring across at her. Scott with a surprised expression and Jane looking somewhat bemused. She turned back to the man in front of her, who was wearing no less of a bemused look of his very own. “I just figured since you were passing the lab and we haven't met yet, I would, uh, say hi.”

The dark haired man blinked at her, then turned to the man at his side with a confused expression on his face. The blond - Captain America, Darcy reminded herself, just to hammer home how awkward the situation was - smiled uncertainly back at her over the other man’s shoulder. 

“I'm Darcy,” she blurted out, in an effort to break the silence, and reminded herself sharply not to thrust her hand out to shake his, because a girlfriend wouldn’t be greeting her lover like that. Lover. She groaned internally and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from rolling her eyes at herself. “Darcy Lewis? I work with Jane.” 

They both stared at her, and she was starting to question how on earth she’d managed to let her mouth run away with her this badly. 

“Steve Rogers.” The blond said, and nudged his friend in the ribs with his elbow, hard. The dark-haired man turned to look at him slowly, incredulity painted all over his handsome face, and then just as slowly turned back to Darcy, who gave him an apologetic shrug. 

“James Barnes.” 

“The Winter Soldier, right?” She said cheerfully, and in an instant his face shuttered down in front of her. In her head, Darcy swore creatively in the three different languages she knew, made up a few more from ones she didn’t, and subconsciously took a half-step back from the man. “Um-”

Captain America - Steve - put a hand to the dark haired man’s arm and squeezed protectively. 

“Well, I’ve done enough damage for one afternoon.” Darcy muttered under her breath to her own chest, eyes lowered and mentally kicking herself. She threw up a poor sort of half-smile that didn’t reach anywhere close to her eyes, and turned on her heel back to the lab door. 

“Goodbye, Darcy Lewis.” He said quietly, behind her. Darcy, already in the process of ranking the encounter in her top five most embarrassing life moments, didn’t hear catch it. 

\------

Bucky Barnes was confused.

He remembered having female company, or at least he thought he did. At any rate, whether he remembered it from personal experience or whether his head had taken creative license to fill in the gaps with the things Steve had told him about his life before- 

Well. His life before.

He had a vague idea that he was supposed to have been something of a ladies man. He'd been back to the museum exhibit, with Steve, and this time instead of staring up at the angular features of Captain America or fighting the hot blood rush in his veins that threatened to make him vomit all over the floor as he looked at a man with the same face as him, he read the exhibits.

Perused the artefacts.

Artefacts even, that had once belonged to him. Or so Steve said. 

There had been many photos. A tall, handsome young man with dark hair carefully set and eyes that laughed at him from the black and white walls. Many showed him with an arm slung around Steve, or at least a scaled-down version of Steve of whom he had slightly stronger memories, but perhaps just as many with his hand on the waist of pretty girl.

So he knew he'd attracted women. Looking at himself - or at least the man he had been - he could understand why that might have been, even if he couldn’t quite remember doing it. Looking at the shaggy haired mess that stared back out at him, with more than a hint of what-you-lookin’-at? 

Well, it didn’t follow quite so easy. 

The girl, though, Darcy Lewis. She’d looked at him, come over specifically to say hello to him. Steve had joked and nudged him, saying he was regaining his mojo, whatever the hell that might be. Bucky didn’t really know and cared even less, but the memory of the petite brunette and the way she’d gazed up at him was scored across his mind. 

\-------

“Well, you didn’t leave me a whole lot of choice, Jane.” Darcy said, both plaintively and somewhat thickly, being that she had her mouth wrapped around half a southern fried chicken wrap at the time. Jane, for her part, groaned from across the table. 

“All you had to say was ‘yeah, he’s from out of town’ and have done with it,” The scientist pointed out, unwrapping her own sandwich and taking an experimental sniff. “That’s, like, from the internationally accepted code of dating.”

“You just made that up.” Darcy said flatly, breaking open a can of Diet Coke as she raised an eyebrow at her boss. “Anyway, little miss genius. ‘He’s from out of town’ is the internationally accepted code of made-up shit.” She tipped out half the can into a mug and pushed it across the table towards the other girl, then proceeded to snap open the can of Sprite Jane had, and do the same with that. 

“Pretty sure telling people you’re dating a hundred-year-old brain-washed ex-assassin with a bionic arm and a thousand yard stare is the very height of ‘made-up shit’.” Jane said tartly, leaning across and stealing a handful of Darcy’s chips. 

“Hey,” Darcy said, with a wounded look. “That’s my hundred year old brain-washed ex-assassin boyfriend you’re talking about there.” The girls dissolved into giggles. 

\------

“Hey, isn’t that the girl who came up to you earlier?” Steve exclaimed, nudging Bucky hard, and the dark-haired man nearly spilled his tray at the unexpected prod. Managing to keep everything still on the green plastic tray, albeit shifted somewhat to the left, the man glowered over at his friend, then focused on where he was pointing. 

The little brunette was sat at a table with the other girl she’d been in the lab with earlier. They were laughing and sharing food. It reminded him a little of how Steve and he had grown up, always sharing everything, no matter how little they had. 

“You know,” Steve piped up conversationally, and Bucky knew from the tone of the man’s voice that he wasn’t going to be impressed with what came next. “I think she liked you.” 

“You know,” Bucky said slowly, still looking at the dark-haired girl. “I think you’re an idiot.”

“Maybe, but I’m an idiot who’s right.” Steve grinned. 

\-------

“Darcy,” Jane said, laughter dying in her mouth as she caught sight of a figure pointing across at their table from the other side of the room. “Isn’t that Captain America?” 

Darcy, mouth full of southern fried chicken, turned her head slightly to where Jane was nodding, and swallowed hard, choking a little in her haste to clear her mouth. The other girl shoved across the half full can of coke and Darcy chugged it thankfully.

“Yes, yes it is,” She mumbled, face pinking up and eyes dropping to the plastic table in front of them, away from the two men standing on the other side of the room. Jane, not one to drop a topic if she could help it, opened her mouth and started again. 

“And with him-”

“Yes, Jane.” Darcy hissed, just about holding back from delivering a swift kick to the other girl’s ankle under the table. Jane could be incredibly single-minded at times, which had served her well in her chosen field but all too often caused Darcy pain. Sometimes even literally. “Can we just ignore the two strikingly obvious men standing across the room for a minute?”

The pair fell silent. For all of a moment. 

“Um, Darce?” 

Darcy grunted, not looking up, poking at what was left of the chips in front of her. Jane threw a concerned look to her right and tapped at Darcy’s outstretched forearm, insistent on getting her attention.

“Those two men you wanted me to ignore? They're coming over. Well, one is coming over.”

“What? Why?” Darcy’s head jerked up with a wild look. She glanced over at the dark haired man who was walking with apparent purpose towards their table, and then back to the girl sitting across from her. “Why is he coming over Jane?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Darcy - maybe because you came onto him earlier?” Jane hissed at her. 

“I did not come onto him-” Darcy hissed back. “I just said hello!”

“Well maybe back in the olden days that meant something more, because he’s definitely coming over.” Jane had her fork in one hand, gripped like a weapon, though whether it was to guard against the man approaching their table or simply to stab into Darcy’s arm to fake an injury for a getaway plan, she wasn’t sure. 

Darcy gaped at her. 

“What, like how in Asgard hitting someone with your truck means ‘take me now’? Don’t be ridiculous, hello means hello, in any time and pla-”

“Hello, Darcy Lewis.”

Darcy gulped hard and swallowed the rest of her words down as she looked up at James Barnes, and Jane kicked her hard under the table. 

“He-Hello.” She said weakly. 

\------

Steve had said he should go over. Steve had nudged him, then taken the tray clean out of his hands and plain shoved him, in the direction of the two girls. 

Now he was stood in front of her, and he had nothing to say. Bucky shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. Damn Steve and his stupid ideas. The girl - Darcy - looked up at him with her mouth slightly agape and clear blue eyes blinking slightly. 

“Well.” He said, clearing his throat after he’d spoken. “I’m just going to… Sit. Over there.” Bucky pointed unnecessarily towards where Steve was already sat, tearing into a ham sandwich. The girl - Darcy, he reminded himself again - stared at him, and then nodded. 

Bucky shuffled off, thinking of around six different and creative ways to get his revenge on Steve. 

\------

“Darce?” 

Jane’s voice registered, barely, but Darcy was caught between gazing after the dark-haired man who’d stalked back off to another table and wondering why the hell he’d come over to them at all. Jane poked her with the fork she was still holding, and Darcy jumped, re-focusing properly on her friend. 

“What?” She said, gracelessly. 

“Um, did you have a list of men you'd prefer not to bump into?” Jane said, nodding her head slightly to her right. Darcy wrinkled her nose before she answered, not entirely following where Jane was attempting to lead her. 

“Not specifically-”

“‘Cause if you did,” Jane interrupted, looking over Darcy's shoulder as she spoke. “Would a certain lab technician be on it?”

Darcy flung her head around and spotted Scott, queuing for food. She wondered whether anyone would notice if she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled her way out of the canteen. It surely couldn’t be the worst possible end to an already horrendous day. 

“Shit.”

“What are you gonna do?” Jane asked, peering across at her, as Scott threw his head back and laugh uproariously at something the willowy blonde from reception said to him, perfect slim legs encased in a slimline black pencil skirt. Darcy joined Jane in staring over at them, and sighed heavily. 

“There's only one thing I can do.”

Jane looked at her in alarm. 

“You're not-”

“I think I am.” Darcy looked sorrowful as she said it, but rose from her seat anyway.

\------

“Hey,” Darcy smiled brightly as she dropped into the spare seat next to Bucky. Captain America - Steve, she reminded herself again - looked surprised but covered it well. Barnes on the other hand just looked at her in confusion. She couldn't really blame him.

“Hello?” He responded.

“Just thought maybe you'd like some company.” She said, hesitantly, a small smile on her face as she looked up at him. His blue eyes were still full of bewilderment, and Darcy could see herself reflected in them as he looked back at her with his head tilted slightly to one side. 

His eyes darted towards the other man.

“Uh, some other company.” She amended quickly, catching onto what he was obviously thinking. “Because, um, because-”

“Because no one but Steve likes me?”

Both Darcy and Steve choked slightly, Darcy recovering a little more quickly than Captain America, who fixed his friend with something of a pained look that earned him only a shrug in return.

“Well, you've not gone around making friends.” Darcy said lightly. “Maybe that should change.” She had one eye on Scott over Barnes’ shoulder, and his jaw was practically on the floor, eyes on her. She shuffled a little closer to the dark haired man - said a quick prayer to whoever might be so inclined to hear it for her indiscretions - and smiled a little wider at him.

“Maybe.” Barnes said cautiously, throwing a glance over to Steve. 

“Maybe I could show you some…” Darcy trailed off, wondering what in the hell she might be able to show a man like Bucky Barnes that he’d actually be interested in. “Some, uh-”

“I like the science museum.”

She blinked at him. Of all the things she might have predicted he might potentially say - and it wasn’t a lot, to be honest, because she’d forced herself on him and most of the things she’d have been thinking would have revolved around variations on ‘go away’ - none of them would have come remotely close to that. 

Darcy must have left her mouth open a little longer than was socially acceptable, as he followed it up with a low mutter. “Just a thought.”

“No, no-” She blurted, and laid one hand unthinking against his. If she’d paused to think at all - which she didn’t, because apparently that wasn’t Darcy’s default mode - she’d’ve realised it was somewhat harder than the average arm. As it was, she quirked a corner of her mouth and squeezed reflexively. “I’ll take you, if you wanna go. It’ll be fun.”

Bucky looked down at her hand clutching at his metal arm, and smiled.


	3. Chapter Three

“I can't believe you went on a date with the Winter Soldier.” Jane said, shaking her head incredulously and leaning across the lab table to shove a grape in her mouth, chewing as she spoke. The lab was, thankfully as far as Darcy was concerned, deserted apart from the two girls. 

“It wasn't a date.” Darcy mumbled, scuffing her Converse along the floor with an awkward squeak over the linoleum and looking down from her friend. She shucked her blazer, shrugging it off her shoulders and discarding it haphazardly over a spare desk without a second look. 

“What was it then?” Jane asked, fixing her with a look across the table, snagging another two grapes from the plate sat between them. She span on her chair, head back and legs kicking, a full three-sixty before she faced the little brunette again, a smirk on her face. 

“An outing.” Darcy said mulishly, hopping up onto the table and pulling the plate towards herself. 

“The difference being-?” Jane span again, feet on tiptoe and lazily turning her slowly in the swivel chair. 

“A date is awkward. An outing is not.”

“You're doing dating wrong, Darce.” Jane said, shaking her head yet again. 

“Don't I know it. Isn't that what got me into this mess in the first place?”

 

\------- Five Hours Earlier

Darcy presented herself at reception, slightly ahead of schedule, feeling awkward and not a little like she was in over her head. Jane had sent her on her way, but only after she’d double-checked that her cell number was top of the list of Darcy’s speed dials, and that they were both clear on where all the emergency exits were located. 

“You know it’s a museum, right?” Darcy asked vaguely, rubbing at her nose awkwardly as Jane assessed the outfit she’d chosen for running capabilities. 

“You know he’s shot at least three major political figures in the last four decades?” Jane responded, before telling her decidedly she’d be better changing into sneakers. 

“In museums?” Darcy said flippantly, and earned herself a smack on the shoulder. Darcy rolled her eyes and obediently shuffled off to change her footwear. Upon returning, Jane finally deemed her acceptably laden with safety precautions, and allowed her to leave. 

Now she waited in the tower reception, ten minutes early but glad for the breathing space. The willowy blonde on the desk gave her a tight smile that spoke volumes, and Darcy turned her back to the polished mahogany expanse and the modelesque girl that manned it. Knowing her current run of luck, Scott would make an unscheduled appearance shortly. Darcy thumbed across the touchscreen of her cell phone, flipping from screen to screen without really looking at it. 

“Hi.” Came a quiet voice from behind her, and she jumped, dropping the phone. It hit the marble floor with an ominous cracking sound, and bounced, skittering across the reception. Darcy yelped, and dropped to her knees after it, at exactly the same time Barnes did. The result was a second resounding crack, and Darcy falling backwards rubbing at her forehead. 

\-------

“Wow.” Sam remarked, tilting his head to one side as he and Steve looked down onto the tower reception from the first floor balcony, and watched Bucky crack the little brunette’s head. “He’s really bad at this.”

“He’ll be okay.” Steve said, wincing at little as he watched his best friend. “Probably.”

\-------

“Yikes, you’re hard.” She squinted at him, blinking through the pain, then processed what she’d said. “Oh, god, I mean - your head. Your head is hard and, and, nothing else.” He looked at her, seemingly confused, and offered up her phone without further comment. 

Darcy took it, somehow scrambling into a kneeling position, letting her head hang forward so that she could spend a moment’s reprieve from her own embarrassment behind a curtain of dark curls as she shoved the phone into her jeans pocket and mentally slapped herself around. Get it together, Lewis. Jesus. 

“Are you gonna stay down there, or…?”

Darcy flipped her head up instantly at the sound of his voice, and came face to crotch with Barnes. She inhaled deeply, and squeezed her eyes shut, wondering who or what she should possibly pray to that would open up a wormhole into another dimension, into which she could disappear. 

You do have Jane on speed-dial, she thought. 

She heard a small sigh and opened her eyes again to find him - thankfully - also hunkered down. Clear blue eyes met hers and Barnes crooked a rueful half-smile her way. One hand rubbed at the back of his head. 

“Look…” He started, a little awkward. “If you don’t want to do this, it’s okay. I get that Steve is a little… Excitable. I guess he pushed you into this, or whatever, but you don’t need to feel obligated.”

Darcy frowned, and put one hand out instinctively, covering the one that wasn’t lingering around his neck. “I don’t feel obligated.” She said, gazing back at him and then wrinkling her nose. “I just lack any kind of social grace. Or, um, regular grace.” She finished up with a shrug and a crooked little smile of her own. 

He laughed, a small huff of humour that was over almost as soon as it started. “Guess that makes two of us.”

Barnes stood, and offered her the other hand, the one that had been massaging at his neck. Darcy took it, and he pulled her carefully to her feet. 

\------Present Time

“A date is where the guy says he'll pay, and the girl protests and he probably winds up paying anyway because it's societally ingrained in him that he has to do so.”

Darcy looked over at her boss with a sigh as the other woman finishing talking. “Are you reading this from a book?”

“Urban dictionary.” Came the answer. 

“Ah, the font of all knowledge.”

“Yeah, but did he pay?”

There was a pause. 

“Shut up, Foster.”

\-------

“Two, please.” 

His voice was quiet and his stance unassuming, a black jacket shrugged on as they left the tower and an unbranded baseball cap tugged low on his head. Barnes stood at the kiosk and Darcy prodded him in the ribs until he turned to her with a questioning look. 

“I’m supposed to be taking you to the museum.” She said insistently, and poked him again. He caught her finger before she could touch him, and shook his head. 

“Been a long time since I took a girl anywhere.” The man said to her, taking both the tickets and his change from the wholly uninterested girl on the other side of the glass barrier. “But I’ve not forgotten how it goes.” He offered her a ticket, and Darcy took it after a beat. 

“Fine.” She said, mutinously. “But I’m getting lunch.”

She missed the sidelong look he gave her as they passed into the main atrium, which would have let her know in no uncertain terms that Bucky Barnes was not letting her pay for anything, let alone a sandwich. 

\------

“So what’s he like?” Jane asked, a certain conspiratorial tone to her voice as she leaned across the desk and nudged Darcy’s shoulder. “You know, the Winter Soldier, up close.”

“He's okay.” Darcy shrugged. “He’s just a person, Jane.”

“He's kind of…” The other girl trailed off. 

“Kind of what?”

“Handsome.” Jane said, and even she sounded a little surprised as she was saying it. “I mean, once you get past the slightly angry look.”

“You think?” Darcy scrunched her nose. She'd been so busy trying to make sure she didn't say something else offensive to him that she'd barely looked at him the whole date.

Not date, dammit. Outing.

\------

“You’re not enjoying this.”

He said it matter-of-factly, and she jerked her head up to look at him properly as he stood beside her. Barnes looked resigned, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, stance a little wide, baseball cap still rammed low on his head. Darcy made a noise of protest. 

“I’m having a great time.” She said, nodding her head fervently to back up the claim. Barnes remained unconvinced. She rolled her head back on her neck with a groan, knowing she had no choice but to confess to him. 

“Well, the thing is…” She sighed, letting her shoulders sag forward. “I don't really like science.”

He blinked. “You work in a science lab.”

“You never got stuck doing a job you didn't really like?” She said slightly irritably, then thought properly about what she'd just said and slapped a hand over her mouth in horror. Barnes stared back at her, and then laughed. 

“I didn't mean-” she mumbled behind her hand at him, words muffled and eyes wide. Slowly her hand dropped and she started again. “Oh shit, I just don't think, I'm sor-”

“It's fine.” He said, cutting across her. Darcy stopped talking but gave him a look that let him know she was just as unconvinced about that as he had been about her loving the science museum.

“So what's so great about science for you, then?” She said, wrapping her arms around herself and opting to stare at the exhibit next to them rather than feel uncomfortable with his gaze on her. 

“I was born in 1917.” He said, shifting to stand by the side of her and gazing up. “We didn't even have toasters, and now every pretty much every household can connect to people halfway across the world through a computer if they want to. See somebody's face and talk to them, on a device not much bigger than a credit card. Fucking credit cards, even.” Bucky shook his head. “This shit is from a future we couldn't even dream about.”

He glanced to his right and found that she was staring up at him with an odd look on her face, head tilted to one side. “Something in my teeth?”

It was her turn to blink.

“No, I just...I just never thought of it that way.” Darcy scrunched up her face and then turned back to the exhibit in front of them. It was a huge display dedicated to the Vostok 6, which - Darcy learned after scanning the information plaque - was the capsule flown by Valentina Tereshkova, the first ever woman in space. 

“So what do you do in the lab?”

He’d turned back to her, and there was a quizzical look on his face as he asked it. 

She snorted. “Well, what you really mean is what does Jane do in the lab, because that's the exciting bit. Jane tries to open a portal to another world, and I try to stop her dehydrating before she she passes out.” Darcy paused. “Oh and I guess I decrypt her notes as well. They're not always fit for human consumption.”

“And you don't like it?” 

“I like my job.” Darcy insisted, as they started a slow walk onwards to the next exhibition hall. The large black and white sign suspended above their heads informed them that it was dedicated to the ‘Pursuit of the Future’. Darcy also quietly noted the small cursive postscript that let them know also that it was funded by a generous donation from the Stark Foundation. 

Barnes raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing else. 

“Okay.” She took a deep breath and started again. “I kind of fell into the job because I needed a couple extra college credits and Jane was the only one desperate to hire me.”

Darcy made a what-can-you-say sort of gesture at the man in front of her, before continuing. 

 

“And then crazy shit happened, so I stuck around to help clear up. And then even crazier shit happened, so I stuck around again. And then Stark decided to offer Jane shiny toys and actual money, and you know, money helps, right? So now I'm here.”

Barnes processed what she’d told him. 

“All because you did an interview… 5 years ago?”

“Oh, I never actually interviewed for the job.” Darcy shook her head, mainly to herself, remembering the day she’d walked into Jane Foster’s life, wholly unprepared for where it would ultimately take her. “I mean, I turned up for an interview, I was totally prepared. And when I got there, Jane had just managed to make something explode so she threw a bucket and mop at me and after it all got cleaned up, we made coffee and then I guess I just kinda stayed.”

\------

“Think I’m gonna turn in.” Darcy let out a yawn that was only half-faked. “Long day, you know?”

Jane waved a hand in her general direction, having lost interest in Darcy’s non-date and firmly back in the land of wormholes and bridges to other realms. Darcy made a wave back at her boss, which went wholly unseen, and slipped from the lab. 

As the elevator sped upwards to the small apartment her job apparently entitled her to - Darcy assumed that there was simply a space surplus in the tower - she thought back on the rest of the date. 

Goddamnit. 

Outing. 

\------

“Holy cow.” Bucky stopped, stock still, and Darcy - not looking - walked into the back of him. He was, unsurprisingly, solid. 

“What's up?” She asked, righting herself and stepping out from behind him. 

“I saw that car.” He said, gaze fixed firmly upwards and pointing to a slightly battered red and silver vehicle, suspended from the ceiling. “The night Howard Stark presented it at the world's fair.”

“Looks like it's seen better days.”

“Ain't we all.” He muttered. 

Darcy leaned forward to cast her gaze briefly over the plaque, noting that Howard Stark had apparently abandoned the idea for a few years to focus on the infamous ‘Project Rebirth’ - the initiative that had brought forth Captain America to the world. She looked up at the car again, and then to the side, finding something that caught her interest. 

“Oh hey, this bit is actually cool-” Darcy grabbed at Barnes’ hand without really looking at him and tugged, but the man froze into place. Realising she wasn't moving, Darcy turned back to him, shoving masses of dark curls back from her face and peering up at him with concern. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah-” he said, more convincingly the second time. He shook himself, almost bodily, and stepped forward. Darcy smiled and turned back on her heel. Behind her, unseen, Bucky flexed his left hand, and the heat sensors slowly faded out the touch of her hand in his.


	4. Chapter Four

“Did you kiss her?” 

“Did she kiss you?”

Steve and Sam looked at him expectantly as he slunk through the apartment door; Steve sitting up on the couch and Sam perched on the kitchen stool shovelling cornflakes into his mouth. 

“A better question is why are you eating breakfast food at-” Bucky checked his watch. “Eight o’clock in the evening?”

“Deflection.” Sam nodded, taking another mouthful and then pointing at Bucky with his spoon. “The man’s deflecting, Steve.”

\------Three days earlier

“Hey.”

Darcy started in surprise, almost losing the coffee she’d been hanging onto in one hand, and a whole line of illegible text appeared on her computer screen. She spun on her heel to face Barnes, who was looming over her.

“Hey,” she said in response, and tried not to sound too surprised at finding him there. “What are you doing here?” She said in a low voice.

“I thought…” He looked a little lost, but regained himself. “I just thought that maybe we could go somewhere you like. Because you hate scien-”

Darcy slapped a hand over his mouth.

“Ixnay on the ience-say.” She hissed, glancing over at Jane who was thankfully engrossed in what she was doing. Barnes stared down at her, surprised and not a little confused. He mumbled against her hand and Darcy let her hand drop a little so that she could hear him properly.

“I don't know what that means.” He repeated.

Darcy shot another look over to Jane, and then - grabbing a fistful of his shirt - pulled Barnes sideways into their supply cupboard and shut the door firmly, plunging them into darkness. Groping blindly for the light switch and finally flooding the small space, she found a confused super soldier looking back at her with folded arms.

“Jane doesn't know that I don't like science.” She explained in a low voice, suddenly very aware of the fact that the cupboard was not built for two and also stuffed full of junk, making an already small space almost claustrophobic. Darcy wrapped her arms around herself and tried not to move too much. 

“Are you sure?” Barnes said with a quizzical look on his face. “I could see it as soon as we stepped inside the museum and you’ve worked with the woman for-”

“Yeah, okay.” Darcy huffed. “It’s probably more one of those ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ things, but there’s no need to shatter the illusion if everyone is happy to play along.”

He fell silent, and dropped his head a little, shaggy dark hair falling in his eyes. Darcy swallowed, eyeing the door and wondering how smart a move it was to haul a highly trained assassin into the world’s smallest cupboard and then disagree with them. Barnes’ head rose slightly and his voice was soft when he spoke. 

“I just thought… You gave up your day to take me somewhere that bored you-”

“-I wasn't bored.” Darcy interrupted. He raised an eyebrow, and her shoulders sagged a little in defeat. “I wasn't entirely bored.” She amended. He remained unconvinced but continued on anyway.

“So I figured I owed you a trip somewhere that wouldn't.” Barnes finished quietly. 

“You don’t owe me anything.” Darcy said, looking up at him and feeling a little guilty, remembering the circumstances. “I pretty much forced myself on you, so-”

“I liked it.” Bucky said quickly. “I mean, the museum.” Darcy smiled at him. 

“I’m glad you did.” 

“So I should repay you for that.” Bucky said firmly. 

“That’s not really how it works-” Darcy stopped at the look on his face, and tried again. “I like the funfair?” She said, shyly. “But the deal is that I pay.”

Barnes’ mouth opened. 

“Nope-” she said, cutting him off before he began, crossing her arms over her chest more decisively and popping a hip as far as she was able in the small space. It hit a broom which wobbled dangerously and threatened to fall over, but Darcy did her best to ignore it. “If you pay at the science museum then I pay at the fair. Or I'm not going.”

Bucky frowned. He didn't think this was how dating was supposed to go. 

\-------

Three days later, and the pair were wandering the fairground. 

Darcy was absentmindedly kicking her feet whilst she pulled apart bits of cotton candy, and Bucky held a giant cup of Coke, his baseball cap once more jammed onto his head. They weaved in and out of the crowds until Bucky found something to say. 

“So,” He said, then paused, realising that perhaps he didn’t have something to say after all. Darcy had stopped to wait for him, fingertips stained pink and sticky with what remained of the cotton candy. Bucky panicked. “You like the fair, then?”

She grinned at him, seemingly unfazed by his poor question. 

“Yeah,” She said, turning her head from him slightly to suck at the ends of her fingers in quick succession before she continued. “It’s like being a kid again. No responsibilities, you know?” Bucky couldn’t find anything much to say to that, so he nodded at her for want of anything better to do. Darcy wrinkled her nose, apparently understanding. 

“I mean, there’s no point to a rollercoaster. Right?” The little brunette said, pointing up at one of them that had a track curving overhead. “You queue for ages, then it starts, it ends in seconds, maybe a minute or so if you’re lucky, and there’s physical nothing you take away from it.” 

She was nodding as she spoke, and so Bucky nodded along with her. 

“But-” Darcy turned to watch as a screaming carriage whizzed past overhead, there and gone in moments, her blue eyes lighting up as she looked up. “But it’s fun. It’s just pure feeling, pure emotion. There’s nothing adult about it, it’s something done wholly for the feeling it leaves you with.”

Bucky looked from the girl at his side to the track above him, and thought that it had been an awfully long time since he had done something purely for the feeling of it. He wasn’t entirely sure where he would start with that. 

Next to him, Darcy eyed him cautiously, and then carried on, vaguely aware that she might have said something that didn’t wholly make sense for him. She cleared her throat and changed tack. 

“Jane took Thor here once.” She said, conversationally, and Barnes looked back at her, fixing on her face. “He got really excited about the hammer but it didn't work out too well for the sideshow. Lucky for them the guy was an Avengers fan.” Darcy snorted.

“Steve says Barton comes down here on the weekends.” Bucky offered, as they started walking again, skirting carefully around a small boy who was wailing at the sky and a fast-disappearing balloon. 

“The arrow guy?”

“Yeah,” Bucky slurped his Coke thoughtfully. “Steve says he fleeces the shotgun sideshows but it's okay because he gives the prizes to kids.” 

Darcy laughed out loud, rustling up the empty candy wrapper and dunking it in the nearest trash can. They’d found themselves at the edge of the sideshows, and a particularly optimistic teenager was squaring up to the punch ball machine. He looked as though it was much more likely that the punch ball was going to take him out instead. 

Bucky had a faint memory of Steve being in the same position. 

“You want a go?” 

He turned to find Darcy smiling up at him, nodding her head slightly toward the machine as the teen struck out for the third time and slunk away, much to the laughter of his assorted friends. 

“Not sure it's built to withstand me.” Bucky said quietly, and Darcy looked at him in confusion. He raised his left hand slightly and her lips came together in a small ‘o’.

“Well, what about the shooting gallery?” Darcy said, turning abruptly from the stall. “You're a marksman, right? Come show me how's it's done.”

\------

“The sighting on this is all wrong.” He muttered, and she laughed, waiting next to him. 

“It will be. It's not supposed to be fair.”

“I'll show ‘em fair.” He grumbled under his breath, and raised the gun to his shoulder, breathing deep and adjusting for the poor quality and deliberate pull to the left that seemed to be built into it. Five shots rang out in quick succession and the tin cans rattled to the floor. 

“Nice.” The old fella on the stall said cautiously, not sounding as though he really thought it was overly nice, his voice a little tight as he bent to collect the scattered cans. “You seen some service, pal?”

“Something like that.” Bucky said tightly, handing the gun back and turning away from the stall. 

“Hey, you need to pick out a prize for your little lady.” The man called after him, and Bucky turned back, glancing with some awkwardness at the little brunette beside him. Darcy protested, shaking her head and putting her hands up. 

“Oh, no,” She said, stepping back from him. “You won it, not me.” 

“Can't imagine what use I’d have for a stuffed animal.” He answered, eyeing what was hanging from the awning. “What about this?”

He plucked a large bear down, one clad in Stars and Stripes and carrying a tiny plastic shield. Darcy laughed as he handed it to her.

“A Cap bear?” She said, taking it from him. He shrugged, the barest hint of a smile hanging around his mouth as he turned away from her. From the corner of his eye he watched as she hugged it to her, and thought about how she’d said nothing about being called his little lady. 

\--------

“Ice cream?” 

Darcy saw the hesitation on his face before he even started to speak, and cut across him. “I mean, if you don't like it-”

“I don't know.” 

“You-” She paused, a little confused. “You don't know?”

“I don't know if I like it.” He said, looking at the ground. “I don't remember.”

Darcy blinked.

“Well that's okay. In fact, that's better than okay.” She brightened. “You get to be the official ice cream taster. All the flavours, until you find one you like best.”

He looked a little unsure. “What if I don't like it?”

“Then we'll just find something you do and I’ll just do my duty and eat whatever ice cream you don’t like.”

\--------

“You have a real sweet tooth.” Darcy observed from the other end of the little cafe table as he sat at the opposite end of the bench. She was scooping out small spoonfuls of mint choc chip whilst Barnes polished off his fourth tub of ice cream. It turned out that, far from not liking it, he very much like chocolate, strawberry, cookie dough and pistachio. 

“Sorry,” he said, a little sheepishly as he paused between mouthfuls and made what appeared to be a concerted effort to slow down. “Steve and I, we eat a lot.”

“You should meet Thor some time.” Darcy said wryly, her own spoon hovering near her mouth as she spoke. “Pretty sure he'd give both of you a run for your money.” At her side, Barnes stiffened and Darcy turned her head to look at him askance. He shook his head at her and she narrowed her eyes, shifting closer to him. 

“What’s wrong?” She asked quietly. 

“Nothing.” He said shortly. “I'll put these in the trash.” He scooped up the empty tubs and wooden spoons. Darcy tracked him as he wandered his way through the crowd, and noticed his head turn briefly to a pair of young men who eyed him in return. 

She got up and moved closer to them, twisting herself as she sat back down to listen into what they were saying. 

“Did you see that guy’s arm?”

“What a freak.”

“Hey.” Darcy said loudly, getting up from where she’d perched herself. “What’s your problem?” They stared at her, then laughed. Darcy felt her cheeks pink up as they sniggered. “Big man, are you?” She snapped, rounding on them. “Big enough to talk behind someone's back?”

“Push off, lady.” The smaller one sneered at her. “What’s it to you?”

“You’ll find out, won’t you-” She snapped, and without thinking her fist was flying towards his face, connecting smartly with his nose. He yelled and fell backwards, and Darcy found herself doing the same, yanking her hand back as a burst of pain flooded her system. The man scrambled, one hand to his bleeding nose, and retreated. 

Stumbling back, Darcy hit a wall of muscle and looked up to find Barnes standing behind her. 

One arm wound its way around her middle and guided her backwards, until he maneuvered his way around her and pushed her down into a chair. Barnes dropped to his knees in front of her and looked up as she swore creatively, screwing her eyes up against the pain. 

“Oh my god that hurts-” She yelped, tears beginning to form in the corners of her eyes. “Oh,  
Jesus, how do people go around doing that?”

“That’s because you punched him with your thumb tucked inside your fist.” He murmured from below. Darcy, cradling her hand to her chest, blinked down at the man in front of her, and he looked back, eyebrows knitted together. 

“Do I want to know why you just hit a guy?” Barnes asked slowly. 

“He was being a dick. Trust me.”

“Did he try-”

“No.” Darcy said firmly, through the pain in her hand, as Barnes had risen slightly from where he was crouched in front of her, and much as the guy was an asshole she thought he'd probably had his just desserts for the day. Barnes bit his lip and glanced over his shoulder at where the young men had left, and Darcy knew he didn’t believe her, but he turned his attention back to her anyway. 

“You have blood all over you.”

“It’s not my blood.” She sniffed. 

“No, but it’s your broken hand.” He pointed out. 

“Broken?” She yelped again, eyes wide and looking from her hand up to his face and back again.

“It’ll just be your thumb, give it here-”

Bucky, crouched low in front of the small brunette, felt something tighten in his chest as she obediently passed her hand over to him. Like she trusted him to take care of it. 

“You need to go to hospital.” He said, looking at her hand critically and trying to not hold it too firmly. 

“I do?” She blinked away tears. 

“Well, I did field medicine in the war but that was seventy years ago and my memory's been known to be spotty, so…” he shrugged, and she laughed. A small, slightly watery laugh, but a laugh none the less.

\------

They exited the hospital after an hour or so, Darcy’s thumb bound and a prescription for painkillers tucked into her back pocket. Barnes hailed a cab, and when it pulled into the rank at the side of the road, he pulled open the door and guided her gently into it. 

As the car pulled away, with Barnes’ terse directions to the tower ringing in the cabbie’s ears, he turned to the little brunette sat on the opposite side of the back seat to him and gave her a small smile. She was leaning on an elbow, staring out of the window as the city zipped past. 

“You know,” He said in a low voice. “Next time it might be better just to tase the guy.”

“Tasers are illegal in the state of New York.” She answered quietly, and he got the impression it might have been the first thing she’d checked upon moving there. 

“I understand they frown on punching people, too.” 

“Says the guy who used to kill people for a living. I mean-” Darcy’s eyes widened, mentally cursing herself for letting her mouth run away with her again. Her eyes darted towards the cab driver, but the glass partition was firmly up and he was singing along to the radio. Badly. 

Bucky shook his head from the other side of the cab. “It's okay.” Darcy grimaced and settled back to looking out of the window, slumped in on herself slightly. He looked over at her, side profile and illuminated by the neon lights of the city as they flashed past. 

“Oh-” she said, sitting up properly and looking around herself. Bucky jerked his head back, fixing his gaze on the back of the cab driver’s head. 

“What's wrong?” He asked, swallowing hard. 

“Cap bear.” Darcy turned to him, looking upset. “I left him behind, I didn't think. I'm sorry-”

“Why are you sorry?” Bucky asked, confused and turning back to her. 

“You won him, and I didn't even think to pick him up.” She was worrying on her lower lip with her teeth. 

“It's fine.” Bucky said, shaking his head. “If you can stand to come out with me again, I'll win you another one.”

\-------

He delivered Darcy to her door, instructing her firmly to take more painkillers before she went to bed. She gave him a sloppy salute and he shook his head, turning away. He’d made it around halfway down the corridor before she caught up to him. 

“You forget something?” Bucky asked. 

“Just…” Darcy looked up at him. “Just thanks. For looking after me.” She reached up on tiptoes and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek, before turning on her heel and running back to her apartment door. 

Bucky stood in the corridor for another five minutes before he managed to get his legs moving. 

\-------Half an hour later

“Wait, wait, wait.” Sam said, shaking his head. “Let me get this straight. You went on a date-”

“Not a date.”

“Dude. You went on a goddamned date, and it was a second date at that.” Wilson said, with a face that dared Bucky to contradict him. “A date which ended in someone getting punched, and it wasn’t you doing the punching?”

Bucky shrugged, and Sam threw a look at Steve before continuing.

“Marry her. She’s perfect for you.”


	5. Chapter Five

Darcy, a little wobbly on her feet from a lack of sleep and the painkillers that Jane had given her - taking one look at the prescribed ones from the hospital and claiming she could do better than that - stumbled into the lab.

Sat on her desk was a large bear, dressed as Captain America.

She smiled, looking at it, and wondered how the hell he’d gotten ahold of it. It might have been the one she’d left behind at the funfair, it might have been a new one that he’d fetched from the same sideshow, although how he might have managed either of those things in the few hours that had passed between her stumbling into her apartment and wandering back into the lab, she wisely thought best not to dwell upon. 

Darcy reached out for the bear, trailing fingers over its soft fur, and smiled again. 

“You know, I honestly thought you were making it up.” Came a voice from behind her, and Darcy jumped. She turned, and found Scott grinning down at her. He was still, she found to her dismay, alarmingly attractive, even if it were tempered by a large side of irritation. 

“Making what up?” She asked, nonchalantly, as if she had no idea what Scott was talking about, and turning away from him back toward the desk. He shook his head, still grinning, and reached around her easily to pluck the bear from the tabletop. 

Darcy narrowed her eyes.

“Cute.” Scott observed, making one of the bear’s large paws wave at her. He laughed as Darcy snatched it back from him, hugging it to herself tightly. 

“You know what I mean,” he said, parking his ass on the edge of her desk and looking at her thoughtfully. Darcy raised an eyebrow and put the bear carefully to one side. “About the Winter Soldier. Dating him.”

The girl folded her arms over her chest and regarded him.

“You looked so put on the spot, when Jane jumped in,” Scott continued, his own arms folded now over his chest, white lab coat open and his blue shirt buttoned neatly underneath it. He looked down at her, and his eyes were thoughtful. “I thought for sure you were just pointing at any man who had the misfortune to walk past.”

Darcy bridled at the use of the word misfortune, but managed to keep her tongue to herself.

“And yet there you were, all over him in the cafeteria.” Scott laughed, a certain amount of disbelief still tangible in his voice as he spoke. Darcy felt the strong urge to kick him, and wondered if she might have saved a few people a lot of trouble if she’d only given into that urge in the first place. “I guess he really is your boyfriend.”

“Scott-” Darcy began angrily, a hand to her forehead where her temples were starting to pound, and wishing he would just go away.

“Darcy?”

She turned at the sound of his voice, slowly, to find Bucky looking down at her. The expression on his face was unreadable, but she went ahead anyway and took a stab at it being nothing good. Her mouth opened and, for once in the history of Darcy Lewis, nothing came out. 

He looked past her, and his eyes darkened before they flicked back to her face. Darcy shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, and then suddenly his arm was around her waist, dragging her to him. Darcy barely had time to make the noise of protest that bubbled in her chest before his mouth met hers. 

Barnes kissed her hard, with an intensity that took her breath away. His metal arm he looped around her body and his flesh hand tilted her face toward his. She clung to him, desperate and winding one hand into his shirt with the other still bandaged tightly and lying against his chest, until he broke away. 

He stepped back, dropping his hand from her waist and Scott had averted his eyes, awkward and slightly flushed, before making some mumbled excuse and sliding off the desk to disappear from the lab into his own workspace. 

Darcy’s lips tingled and her cheeks felt hot under Barnes’ gaze. He'd still said not a single word, just looking at her almost as hard as he had kissed her just moments before. Then, he dropped his eyes to the floor and spun on his heel.

He'd reached the door, right hand hauling it open, when she caught up to him. She tugged at his free hand, willing him to turn back to her. Barnes paused, looking down at her hand slipped into his and clinging tight, before turning his head slightly toward her.

Darcy took her cue.

“It… It wasn't-” she stumbled, realising that she did not know how to explain the ridiculous situation she'd gotten herself into. Did not know how to wipe away the curious look on his face as he turned back to her, a darkness tinged with something she couldn’t entirely place. And still her lips tingled where he'd covered them with his own, and her heart thrummed inside her chest. 

“S’fine.” Barnes said, voice flat. 

“I…” Darcy’s words failed her again, and it occurred to her briefly that she might not be in the position she was in, had she had the same failure of speech some days before in this very room. The irony was not lost on her.

Barnes shook his head, then shook his hand free.

“S’fine,” he repeated, eyes turned toward her still not not quite meeting her own. “You wanted to make him jealous. I-” he broke off, looking at the floor before continuing. “I remember how that feels.”

“No, no, it wasn't like that,” Darcy said, tone insistent, and pushing her unbandaged hand through her tangled curls in frustration. “Well, I mean, not really-”

“Glad to help,” he said shortly, cutting across her. Blue eyes met hers, a storm of uncertainty raging behind them. “I think that kiss probably sealed it.”

She stared at him, neither mouth nor brain working at all. Barnes looked away from her, grip tightening on the door until there was a squeak of protest from the metal frame, and he finally disappeared through it, letting it swing shut with a clang that echoed around the lab. Darcy remained, frozen in place and staring down the corridor until she could no longer see him. 

“Darce?” Jane asked, confused as she wandered back from the adjoining lab to find her intern with one hand on the door and a faraway look in her eye. 

“Jane,” Darcy said turning to her friend. “I've done a bad thing.”

\---------

“You owe me ten bucks.” 

Steve looked up as Bucky announced his arrival and then dropped heavily into the couch next to him. The couch groaned and springs twanged within it at the sudden addition of 6 foot odd of pure muscle, along with the man already sat upon it. 

“I'm sorry?” Steve asked, bemused as the dark haired man flopped his head onto the arm of the couch and swung his feet up, laying them across the other man’s lap. He sighed and jerked up his newspaper before Bucky’s feet ripped straight through it. 

“You. Owe me. Ten bucks.” Came the reply, from a man with arms folded and eyes closed. 

Steve sighed again, and recalibrated to allow for Bucky’s somewhat linear point of view. 

“Yeah, got that bit. I meant what do I owe you ten bucks for, exactly?”

There was a long pause. So long, in fact, that Steve wondered if Bucky had fallen asleep. Just as he was considering the pros and cons of jabbing the other man firmly between the ribs, Bucky spoke.

“She doesn't like me.”

“Uh-”

“Darcy. The girl. The science museum girl. She doesn't like me.”

“The girl who took you to a place she finds boring doesn't like you?”

This came from Sam, who had appeared from the kitchen dressed in jogging bottoms and a sweat-stained t-shirt, fresh from the gym, and perched himself on the other end of the couch next to Steve. He was digging through a carton of sweet and sour chicken with ease, a pair of chopsticks in one hand and a bemused expression painted across his handsome face. 

Bucky, flinging an arm over his face, mumbled something unintelligible. Steve exchanged a look with Sam. 

“Come again?” Sam asked, mumbling himself around a large piece of chicken that dripped with sticky sweet sauce, chopsticks hovering over the open carton prepared to snatch up another piece. 

“She just wanted to make some other guy jealous.” Bucky clarified, moving his arm only enough to make his words a little louder, and snapping them out staccato, as though he didn’t want to be having the conversation he’d started. 

“And you know this how?” Steve probed. 

“I heard her. In the labs.”

“Right.” Steve said, dragging the word out as he looked between Sam, still perched on the end of the couch and stuffing Chinese food into his mouth, and Bucky, legs spread over Steve's own and one arm covering his face like a petulant teenager. Memories stirred within him of nights spent in similar fashion, Bucky moping on their broken couch in a shabby Brooklyn apartment, bemoaning the fact that Eliza-Rose Rosenthal wouldn’t give him the time of day, no matter how many stolen flowers he laid at her doorstep. 

“I can hear you thinking, Steve.” Bucky. Accusatory. Slightly muffled by arm.

“I assume you're telling me because you want advice.” Steve answered, folding his paper carefully and looking over at his friend. 

“I'm telling you because you said ten bucks she likes me, and I'm claiming it.” Bucky’s voice was stubborn, and that Steve remembered just as much as him moping over girls. 

“Since when does a girl go on two dates-”

“Weren't dates.” Bucky said obstinately. 

“-break her hand on someone else's face and then kiss a guy in the corridor, and not like him?” Sam asked, shovelling chicken into his mouth as he spoke. 

Bucky sat upright.

“I told you that in confidence.” He said, jabbing Steve's shoulder. Steve shrugged, apparently unrepentant of his sin. Bucky jabbed him again, harder. “You can't go around telling people that girls kissed me.”

“One girl,” Sam pointed out, punctuating the air with a proffered chopstick. “Let's not get carried away here, Barnes.”

“One girl,” Bucky huffed. “Is more than enough.”

“You like her,” Steve said slowly, turning to the dark haired man with a growing smile on his face. “You really like Darcy.”

Bucky regarded the big blond for a moment. Sam looked between the two of them, awaiting some answer. 

“Doesn't matter what I think,” Bucky managed eventually. “It is what it is.” He followed it up with a lackadaisical shrug, and then Sam hit him square in the chest with a couch cushion. 

“You're an idiot,” he said frankly, standing up and depositing the remains of his dinner in Steve's trash can. “You’re the biggest idiot this side of him-” Sam pointed at Steve without missing a beat, and that at least made Bucky grin briefly as the other man on the couch frowned. “-and you need to sort yourself out.”

Bucky hauled himself off the couch without another word, and moments later the door to his bedroom slammed shut. Steve gave Sam an exasperated look from the couch, and the other man shrugged. 

“What do you want me to say, Steve? Boy needs tough love if he’s gonna get along in the modern world.” 

Steve threw his folded newspaper onto the couch and padded his way to Bucky’s room. He waited outside the door, listening to the sounds of the man inside, who was, as far as Steve could tell, laying flat on the bed. He knocked on the door softly, waited, and then pushed his way in. 

Bucky was indeed lying on top of the blankets, arms folded behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. Steve lay down carefully next to him, top and tails, and mirrored Bucky’s arms. He too stared up at the ceiling, and he waited for the other man to speak. 

It didn’t take too long. 

“I thought maybe she liked me, Steve.”

Bucky’s voice was quiet, and yet what he said echoed around the room as though he had shouted it. Steve remained where he was, head next to Bucky’s feet, and waited for the other man to continue. It had been a lifetime and more, but he knew his friend, and Bucky would say what he wanted to say, when he needed to say it. 

“Stupid.”

At that, Steve jerked himself partially upright, elbows bent and resting behind him as he looked across to the dark haired man. Bucky hadn’t moved at all. Steve raised an eyebrow that he knew Bucky would catch, even if he wasn’t sitting up. 

“What would any girl want with me, Steve?”

“Seem to recall there were certain things they all appeared to want from you at one time or another, Buck,” Steve said with a lopsided grin, his toes nudging at Bucky’s shoulder in jest as he spoke. The other man snorted. 

“Don’t think they even want that from me anymore, Stevie.”

“Sam’s right, you know,” Steve tried, voice even as he spoke. “Can’t see why she’d suffer through your shitty personality twice if there wasn’t something she liked about your dumb ass.” 

There was a huff from the other side of the bed. 

“M’not chasing after a girl who doesn’t want me.” Bucky said with an air of finality.

\--------

“I didn’t mean to hurt him.” Darcy said mournfully, rolling a pencil around the desktop as Jane regarded her. For once the other woman wasn’t focusing on her science experiments, insteading directing her full attention toward Darcy. 

Darcy, for her part, wasn’t entirely sure that she was all that pleased that she’d managed to stuff something up so badly that it had the power to distract even Jane. That way surely madness lay, and it was a sobering thought. She hugged the Cap bear to her, slumped on a stool and looking morose. 

“I really don’t know what to say, Darce.” Jane said, regarding her from the other side of the table with big brown eyes that considered her friend thoughtfully. Darcy sighed heavily and dropped her chin on top of the Cap bear’s head. 

“Me either,” she said, shoulders falling forward as she curled in on herself, drawing her knees up so that they rested, bent and wedged against the edge of the table. “And he kissed me.”

“Woah, wait, what? Back up,” Jane said, stumbling off her chair and scrambling around the table until she had both hands on Darcy’s shoulders. “Say that again, because my ears don’t believe it.”

Darcy sighed, rolling her eyes, and shook the other girl off. 

“Not funny.” She said sourly. 

“You said-” Jane pointed a finger at her friend. “You swore up and down and practically on the constitution, that you were not going on dates with that man.”

“That’s because I wasn’t-” The little brunette protested, but Jane cut across her. 

“You like him,” she said, an incredulous look creeping over her face as she looked the other girl up and down. “Whether it was him kissing you, or before that, you damn well like him.” 

Darcy hung her head, and then held up her hands in surrender. 

“Guilty as charged,” she admitted. “And don’t go pressing me for details, because I have no idea when that happened, and by all the Asgardian gods and a few other ones for good measure, does he quite clearly never want to see me again, never mind date me.”

“Wait, let me get this straight,” Jane said slowly. “You wound up going on two accidental dates with a man who you weren’t interested in, but wanted to look as though you were interested in, and now that he knows that you weren’t interested in him… You think that you might actually be interested in him and you want to go on a real date with him?”

“Exactly.” Darcy said, pointing at her. 

“How is your life like this?” Jane asked, shaking her head. 

“I used to think it was your fault,” Darcy answered. “But lately I’m forced to admit that some of this might be my doing.”


	6. Chapter Six

“Well, this is a special circle of hell.”

Bucky glanced over at Steve from the corner of his eye as he spoke, and the other man hung his head slightly. They were both dressed to the nines in suits, the likes of which he’d probably never seen in his life before, let alone worn. 

“It’s good PR,” Steve said quietly, and handed him another beer, which Bucky accepted gratefully. Unlike Steve, he could get drunk and indeed was very much banking on getting drunk that night. Pepper wanted to - in her words - ‘clean up his image’ for the public. 

Things that apparently cleaned up his image included, but were not limited to, hospital visits, press junkets and charity appearances. This particular evening, the one that had both him and Steve stuffed into monkey suits and clutching desperately but surreptitiously to beer bottles that he had an inkling might be taken away from him if Pepper noticed, saw them mingling at the Smithsonian. 

“Oh, Captain Rogers,” a breathy blonde appeared and clung onto Steve’s elbow with the sort of determination that let Bucky know she wasn’t going to be going away anytime soon. With a wink and a raise of his now half-empty beer, Bucky disappeared, leaving a dismayed Steve to it. 

Bucky wandered, slipping between other guests and keeping his head tucked into his shirt collar, grateful that Pepper had finally given up on her attempt to have his hair cut. He understood her desire to distance him from the Winter Soldier, but Bucky had long since grown used to having something to hide behind. 

He smoothed down the jacket as he walked, still feeling ill at ease wrapped in material that probably cost more than his parents’ entire house, back in 1917. Pepper had insisted on a three-piece suit, a simple black affair with a turquoise lining that he’d balked at and she’d assured him brought out the blue in his eyes. 

Bucky wasn’t entirely sure he either wanted or needed the blue in his eyes brought out, but there was a steel to the woman that he thought probably explained a lot about how she put up with Stark. And so there he was, turquoise silk-lined jacket and all, feeling a prize idiot. 

He slugged back another mouthful of beer as he walked. 

He took a sharp left turn away from Wilson, who was holding court with a selection of suited men and pretty girls, re-telling some army story that Bucky had heard himself at least five times since he’d been living with Steve. Ducking between two columns, dressed in red and white, Bucky found himself in a small section of the museum. 

And he pulled up short, finding that he was not alone. 

His own face - or, at least, that of the face he’d worn over half a century previous - stared back at him from the wall immediately opposite. Bucky remembered that from two years previous, after he’d hauled both himself and Steve from the Potomac, and then found himself weeks later stood in front of a glass wall that claimed to tell his story. It seemed the museum had shifted it since then. 

Stood in front of that, her back to him, was Darcy Lewis. 

Bucky glanced behind him, but could still see Sam regaling his followers with the same story. He had no inclination to get stuck in the middle of that. Again. Bucky sank back against one of the columns and watched as the girl moved quietly in front of him. Her head tilted to one side, carefully curled hair caught over one shoulder. 

She was dressed up too, a simple black top that met over her shoulders, the two sides twisting together as they met just below her neck, but left most of her back bare, looping back together at the base of her spine. A deep green skirt that twisted around her hips and hit the floor but showed an enormous amount of leg on one side, slit from ankle to hip, as she shifted from side to side, scanning across the words in front of her.

Bucky felt his mouth dry up, and closed his eyes briefly. He’d let himself think too much of the girl, and it was his fault. She’d never indicated that she wanted anything from him more than friendship, had never made a move on him. A voice in the very depths of his head piped up that she’d run down a corridor to kiss his cheek, and Bucky snapped back that it was normal to thank someone for taking them to the hospital. 

Not that he had a lot of experience of normal. 

He blinked, willing his eyes not to linger on the curve of her bare back, the way that the material of her top clung to her curves whilst the satin skirt swished around her legs when she moved. He pushed a hand through his hair, feeling his breath ragged in his chest and fought against remembering how he’d felt when she’d tugged at his left hand a week previous, trying to get him to stay in the lab. 

Bucky’s mind stubbornly replayed for him the moment he’d pulled her flush against him and kissed her. He took another slug of beer. 

“Didn’t think you liked museums all that much,” he remarked, finding his voice somehow, and the little brunette jumped. Jerking back and spinning toward him, her mouth dropped open and the champagne glass he hadn’t realised she’d been hanging onto fell from her hand and shattered all over the marble floor. 

“Shit,” Darcy cursed, dropping to her knees immediately in an attempt to clear up the shards of glass that had scattered at her feet. 

“Don’t-” Bucky said, propping his own beer bottle on top of a glass case to the left of him, and sinking to his own knees beside her as she frantically tried to scoop up the remains of the champagne flute. “Don’t, you’ll-”

Darcy yelped and sat back on her knees, blood beading at the tip of one of her fingers. Bucky sighed. 

“You’ll do that,” he said, and her eyes did not meet his as he spoke. Instead one hand found the other pinching the pricked fingertip between index and thumb, and Bucky realised she’d managed to stab the hand she’d broken at the fair. 

“Not doing too well with that hand, are you?” He said, for want of anything better to say, and finally Darcy’s blue eyes met his as she brought her finger to her cherry red lips and sucked hard on her finger. She shook her head in a vague response to his question, and Bucky’s metal fist clenched against the floor, making a scraping noise as his knuckles moved over the marble. 

Her blue eyes widened as she looked up at him sharply, clocking the noise, and her mouth opened as she let her finger fall away. 

“Buck, you hiding in here?” 

Steve’s voice echoed around the space before his broad shoulders and good-natured face appeared. A face that fell slightly as he looked from Darcy to his friend, and realised that he’d interrupted something. Then his gaze cast over the shattered glass and pool of champagne, bubbles slowly disappearing as they fizzed over the floor, and his head tilted. 

Darcy, for her part, scrambled to her feet, a little unsteady on delicate heels, the green satin of her skirt flashing over bare legs as she stood. 

“I, uh, I…” She looked from Bucky to Steve awkwardly, then waved a hand toward the mess on the floor where Bucky was still kneeling. “I’m just gonna go find something to deal with that.” The girl disappeared in a whirl of skirt and the click of heels against the marble flooring, and Steve ran a hand through his blond hair, dishevelling it. 

“Sorry, man,” He began, chewing at his bottom lip and stepping forward, and Bucky shook his head and rose to his feet. 

“What for?” The dark haired man said brusquely. “Weren’t interrupting nothin’, believe me.”

\---------

“Save me.” Darcy announced dramatically, tugging at Jane’s arm and hauling her away from Thor. The huge blond smiled indulgently as his girlfriend stretched upward on tiptoe to press a kiss to his cheek, and slipped away with her friend. 

“What now?” The scientist asked, as Darcy snagged two champagne flutes from a passing server. She waited expectantly for the other girl to hand her one, but waited in vain, with Darcy downing first one and then the next in quick succession. Jane raised an eyebrow. 

“What the hell happened to you?” She asked, putting both hands out to steady Darcy. 

“Barnes.” The brunette answered, already looking for another server. Jane slipped an arm around the other girl’s shoulders and guided her to a chair, urging her to sit. Once installed in the chair with Jane pulling another over to sit beside her, Darcy dropped her head into her hands and groaned, loud even over the music. 

“I don’t know what to say to him, Jane,” she said, despairingly. “And he caught me reading about him.” Darcy looked agonised. 

“Maybe you should-” Jane began, and Darcy was already shaking her head. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say!” She protested, and the little brunette fixed her with a look. 

“I’ve known you for how many years now?” The girl said flatly. “It’s some variation on ‘just tell the truth, explain yourself, talk to him’, isn’t it?” 

Jane twisted her lips in response, not wanting to confirm Darcy’s accusation but not able to deny it, either. 

“It’s not a terrible idea,” she said eventually. 

“It’s not,” Darcy agreed. “But I still don’t have the right words.” The two girls fell into silence, the party still raging on around them, and the music split every so often by the sound of Thor’s booming laughter that carried even from the next room across. Jane smiled to hear it, and Darcy felt awful for keeping her friend from the man who wasn’t able to spend nearly enough time with her. 

“Look,” she said, starting to rise from the chair. “I’m just gonna go back to the hotel, okay?” Jane started to protest, and Darcy put a hand over the other girl’s mouth, which was a surprisingly effective way to cut her off, although it did mean that Darcy had a neat pearly-pink outline of Jane’s lips against the palm of her hand. 

She looked at her hand. 

“Sephora?”

“Maybelline.”

“Nice,” Darcy said, rubbing her hands together to rid herself of the lipstick mark. “Go plant it on Thor, not me. I’ll be fine. I just want to go home and wallow in self-pity at the shitty situation that’s entirely my doing.” Jane rolled her eyes, but stepped aside, letting her friend pass. 

Darcy tipped her head and dipped into a mock curtsey, before straightening and drawing Jane into a fierce hug. She dropped her head briefly onto the other woman’s shoulder, and allowed herself a small sniff. Jane, who heard it, wisely opted not to comment. 

\--------

“Don’t you think you ought to have said something other than ‘you don’t like museums’?” Sam said critically, as Steve forced Bucky to relay what had happened with Darcy for a second time. He’d come looking for Steve and found them, Bucky on his knees scooping up shattered glass with his metal hand and Steve offering a handkerchief for the spilled champagne. 

Bucky rolled his eyes, and turned his attention to Steve. 

“Why is it that birdbrain needs to know the ins and outs of my life?” He asked, pointedly jerking his head toward Sam as he spoke, earning himself a good-natured laugh from the man in question. 

“Hey man, I’m just saying,” Sam shrugged in response, thumb tapping on the rim of his beer bottle as he regarded Bucky. “We’re all standing here in front of a wall that says how much of a ladies man you were, and I ain’t seeing anything that resembles that.”

“I’m going home.” Bucky announced, shaking his head and pushing past Sam into the main atrium. Steve shoved the wet handkerchief, full of shards of glass, at the other man with a groan before following the dark haired man. 

“Home?” Steve questioned, putting one large hand on Bucky’s shoulder as he finally caught up with him at the main doors. 

“Hotel, whatever,” Bucky answered, shrugging Steve’s hand off his shoulder but turning to face him. He pushed a hand through his hair, dishevelling it. “I don’t… I didn’t want to be here anyway, Steve.”

His friend took a deep breath, then nodded. 

“Okay, Buck,” Steve said, a crooked smile on his face as he looked at his friend. Bucky shucked his suit jacket and loosened the tie and collar. “I’ll cover for you with Pepper if she asks. Text me when you get there, alright?”

Bucky fixed him with an incredulous look. 

“You’re aware that I’m the deadliest thing out there, right?” He said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the direction of the doors.

“Just do it,” Steve laughed, shoving him lightly and earning himself a friendly thump in the bicep for his trouble. He watched as Bucky saluted him, purposefully sloppy and with a tilt to his chin that told Steve would shortly be receiving a photo message of the other man flipping him the bird in retaliation. 

\----------

Darcy made her way down the steps, past a myriad people in fancy gowns and evening suits, and hailed a taxi. Miraculously, one pulled in for her, and she hauled the door open and threw herself into it gracelessly. 

“Where to, miss?” The gum chewing cabbie asked, eyes only half concentrating on her reflection in his rear-view mirror. Darcy had just opened her mouth to tell him that she wanted him to take her to The Four Seasons, when the door opened again. 

“This cab taken?” A gruff voice asked, and Darcy jerked back further against the seat as she recognised it. Barnes ducked his head into the car, focused more on the driver than on her, and she pressed herself against the door. 

“You two going the same way?” The cabbie asked, stretching an arm over the back of the seat and looking between the pair of them. Darcy bit down hard on her lower lip as Barnes looked into the car properly and recognised her. 

“I, uh,” He said, eyes darting from her to the driver and back again. 

“A simple yes or no will suffice,” The cabbie drawled, and another car honked hard from behind them. “Meter’s runnin’, sweetheart.”

It wasn’t overly clear whether he was addressing Darcy or Barnes. She took a breath and looked straight at the dark haired man hanging awkwardly over the car door. 

“Four Seasons?” She asked, and he nodded once, before dropping his eyes from her to the curve of the seat. Darcy turned back to the driver, who was still hanging over the back of the seat, awaiting an answer. “We’re going the same way.” 

“Finally.” The driver said, sarcastic, and turned back to the wheel as Barnes slid into the back of the car, careful to remain on his side of taxi. Darcy swallowed, her eyes unwittingly running over his body and the way he was packed into his shirt and waistcoat. He fidgeted with the jacket, fingers twisting over the sleeves and pulling at the buttons on the cuffs as it lay in his lap. 

Darcy pulled her gaze away, and forced herself to look out of the window. 

What followed was a near half hour of awkward silence, broken only by the odd comment from the taxi driver who seemed to want to take it upon himself to divulge historical facts as they followed a small trail of traffic toward the harbour, before being able to turn up toward the hotel. 

Darcy, who’d never been to DC before, might have found it interesting under any other circumstance, but instead was working on reminding herself to breathe every other second and not to tug too tightly on the deep green satin skirt she was wearing, for fear she might accidentally pull the bow apart that was keeping it together. 

Having dropped her drink all over the floor upon hearing his voice, she thought the last thing either of them needed that evening was for her to exit the cab sans skirt and flash her underwear to the world. Even if it was particularly nice underwear.

Finally, they were pulling up to the front of the hotel, and Darcy leaned forward before the car even began rolling to a halt, stuffing bills at the driver from her purse. From the corner of her eye she could see Barnes’ mouth open, as if to protest, but her hand was already at the door handle and she stumbled her way out of the car. 

Cheeks burning and unable to control the rising flush that threatened to overwhelm her, Darcy hurried over the courtyard, heels clacking wildly as she made her way to the foyer, pushing her way impatiently through the revolving door and emerging to find-

“Scott,” she said, stopping dead, and just about managing to hang onto her purse as her brain threatened to give up and walk out on her, leaving her to her own damn devices. 

The man in question turned and regarded her, a slow smile dragging over his face. He was dressed in a suit, dark and slim fitting, white shirt and collar open. His arm was looped around the waist of a tall, willowy blonde, and Darcy recognised the receptionist. 

“Darcy,” he said easily, looking down at her. “You know Carla, right?” He tightened his grip on the hip of the girl next to him, and she giggled softly, running a proprietary hand down the edge of his suit jacket. 

She turned to the blonde, who gave her a not overly subtle once-over. Darcy felt like a hobbit playing in a costume box, looking up at the girl who had acres of tanned, slim leg and perfectly set waves that lay over her shoulders like a hair care commercial. 

Darcy found her voice, and forced herself into a tight smile. 

“Yup,” she said, popping the ‘p’ like it was gum. “You always give my mail to Darlene in Legal.”

The blonde - Carla, Darcy supposed - frowned, and Scott stepped in. 

“No, uh, no Winter Soldier tonight?”

Darcy bit at the inside of her cheek, and prepared herself for the inevitable word vomit that would land her in a whole other heap of trouble, much as it seemed to do more or less every time she opened her mouth recently. 

“There you are.”

Her mouth opened and then shut rapidly at the voice from behind her, which came accompanied by an arm that slipped over her lower back and around her waist. The skin left bare by the back of Darcy’s top burned under the feel of it, and she looked up hurriedly, confused, into Barnes’ blue eyes.


	7. Chapter Seven

Darcy froze into place, even as Barnes’ touch burned over the bare skin of her back, the delicate little hairs raising as she fought not to visibly tremble. 

“I’m Scott,” the other man said, and thrust out a hand, the other still wrapped firmly around the lithe blonde at his side. Barnes looked at the hand, then at the man who offered it. 

“Yes, I suppose you are,” he said blankly. Scott let his hand rest mid air for an uncomfortable half minute before dropping it back to his side with a cough. 

“You’re the, uh, the, the Winter Soldier,” Scott stuttered slightly, and Barnes tightened his grip on Darcy, hauling her into his side more firmly. She looked up at him, noted the twitch in his jaw and the clench of his teeth that told her quite plainly that he wasn’t comfortable. 

“It’s Bucky,” Darcy blurted, pressing one hand to his chest as though she were shielding him. Scott looked at her, tearing his eyes from the glint of metal that was Barnes’ left hand. She tilted her chin defiantly at the other man. “Bucky Barnes.”

“I, well, yes,” Scott said faintly, taking a step back. “Of course.”

“Why don't we all get drinks in the bar?” Carla suggested brightly, and three pairs of eyes turned to her instantly in abject horror. The pretty blonde, apparently sensing nothing amiss with the people gathered around her, turned to the man beside her and smiled. 

“C’mon baby,” she cooed, running her hand along the line of his lapel again. “It'll be fun.”

Scott turned wild eyes on Darcy, who shook her head back at him as inconspicuously as she was able to do so. She considered briefly the option of stepping on his foot, or aiming a sharp kick to his ankle, but the man was a half step too far away for her to manage it without anyone noticing. 

“Of course, pumpkin, whatever you want,” Scott said lamely, and Darcy threw him a despairing look, starting to wonder what the hell it was she'd ever seen in the man. 

“I have a bit of a headache, actually-” Darcy began in an attempt to save them all, seeing as Scott wasn’t going to step up to the plate, taking a hurried step backward into the solid wall of muscle that was Barnes. His hand, previously around her waist, moved to steady her as she wobbled on her heels. 

“Nonsense, let us buy a round,” Scott said cheerfully, regaining some of his stride. 

Darcy gaped. 

By apparent force of positivity, he steered them into the bar entrance and then into a booth by the door. He then disappeared to the bar, a long smooth mahogany affair, and Carla excused herself to the bathroom, leaving Darcy wedged into a booth with Barnes, both of them awkwardly looking anywhere but at the other. 

“Pumpkin?” Barnes said finally, in a low voice. 

Darcy held her hands up. 

“Hey, not my responsibility,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s snookums or bust for me.”

He eyed her briefly, and a small, tiny, almost non-existent huff of laughter escaped him. Darcy managed a snort of her own, and they laughed together, the release of it shifting a little of the tension that pulsed between them in the booth. 

Darcy swallowed down what was left of her laughter, then twisted her mouth into an odd shape, trying to work out what to say, what not to say, and how on earth she was going to be able to extricate herself from yet another ridiculous situation she’d somehow managed to land herself in. 

It was, she reflected with a heavy internal sigh, fast becoming so frequent an occurrence that she’d shortly be able to note it as a skill on her resume. 

“Look, I… I owe you an explanation,” she said, steeling herself and turning to the man stuffed in the booth beside her, keeping an eye on Scott as he tried and failed to catch the attention of the barman. Darcy thought privately that the barman was probably ignoring him on purpose, and winced as she saw him snap his fingers. 

“You don’t owe me anything,” Barnes said stiffly, holding himself away from her. 

“I’m not… I didn’t… I just -” Darcy practically fought herself to get the right words out, and slumped her shoulders in defeat when they wouldn’t come. She huffed out a deep sigh and rolled her head back to look at him. 

“I’m not in love with Scott,” she said frankly. “We dated - briefly - and then… And then he dumped me. For-” she broke off again, and gestured lamely toward the bar, where the blonde had reappeared and was draping herself all over Scott. She was mildly gratified to notice that the barman was still purposefully ignoring him. 

“And he works in the lab next door and he’s always around, I don’t know, just being Scott-” she waved a hand in his general direction again, dismissively. “Jane thought she was being helpful, getting one back at him or something, saying I had a boyfriend when obviously I didn’t.”

Barnes was watching her, a heavy cloud of confusion apparent over his face. Darcy sighed internally and pressed on anyway, figuring that at least if she told it how it was and he still wanted as far away from her as possible - and boy, could she not blame him for wanting that - she would be able to tell herself she’d been honest. Finally. 

Not that it would be a whole lot of comfort, but at least it would be something. 

“He didn’t believe me, and I just sort of… Saw red,” she shrugged, looking sheepish. “Just because that asshole wasn’t interested, didn’t mean no one could ever be interested, right?” Darcy plowed on, not giving him an opportunity to answer the question she’d inadvertently posed. She wasn’t sure she’d want to hear what Barnes’ opinion was to that one. 

“So I, um, elaborated. A little,” she flushed and turned her head from him, fingers finding the paper napkin on the table and working to shred it as quickly as possible. “You happened to be walking past the lab at the time, so, huh, lucky you I guess.” She swallowed with a grimace.

“Sorry about that,” she offered, not looking at him. “Pretty sure that’s the last thing you needed, right?” Darcy finished with a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh, a purse of her lips and a pull on the napkin which saw it fall apart completely onto the table. 

To her left, Barnes opened his mouth to answer her, and-

“Finally, right?” 

Scott grinned widely - a little too widely, and looking at him, Darcy could see the way his eyes darted toward Barnes as he slid glasses onto the table. She grabbed at the tumbler meant for her, and had downed half of it before she realised the three other occupants of the booth were staring at her. 

She paused, and lowered the glass slowly, letting it thud onto the table as she gave a crooked smile. “Uh, cheers?” she said weakly. 

Scott and Carly - Carla, she reminded herself, being fair to the girl, it wasn’t her fault she was tall and tanned and slim and - Darcy gave herself a mental slap for veering wildly off track. The pair of them looked at her a little strangely, but Barnes at least took up his glass and downed it. Darcy gave him a small smile as he dropped the empty glass back onto the table in front of him. 

He gave her a small smile in return. 

It wasn’t a lot. 

But it was something. 

Darcy dealt herself another mental backhand and reminded herself that getting her hopes up was a fool’s game, and no mistake. 

They passed an awkward half hour, during which Scott talked an awful lot about himself - according to him, he was a star athlete who’d been cruelly looked over by the Varsity teams, and been forced to turn to science where, luckily, he’d also excelled - and Carla giggled. A lot. 

Neither Barnes nor Darcy had an awful lot to contribute, and even if they had, it was doubtful they’ve have been able to offer it over Scott’s monologue. Darcy, wedged between Barnes and the wall, stirred what was left of her drink and wondered seriously about her taste in men. Carla seemed not to require to be allowed to talk in a relationship, and it began to occur to Darcy that she might actually have been standing in the way of true love. 

Or at least as close to true love as Scott was ever going to get, outside of his own mirror. 

Finally, the couple excused themselves again, Scott to the bar to order another round of drinks for the table and Carla to powder her nose for the fourth time. Darcy’s shoulders slumped and she put a hand to her cheeks to massage them gently, aching a little from the fake smile she’d been plastering over her face. 

Barnes turned to her, a serious look on his own face. 

“You don’t actually think these people are interesting, do you?” He asked, bluntly. Darcy shook her head. He took a deep breath in, which looked a lot like a sigh of relief. “And you don’t seriously want to stick around here?”

She shook her head again, but looked over to the bar, then back to the dark haired man squished in beside her. 

“I know my behaviour over the last couple of weeks strongly suggests otherwise, but I’m not actually a sadist,” she said, and one side of his mouth crooked into a grin as he glanced back at her. “However, we’re kinda trapped.” Darcy nodded to the bar, a not particularly great distance away from their booth. 

Barnes snorted. 

“Please,” he said, also looking over the room. “I’ve assassinated presidents in my time. I think I can avoid this joker if I want to.” With that, he jerked his head toward Scott, who was trying and failing to get the attention of the bar staff again, now leaning fully over the counter and waving his credit card ineffectually. Darcy giggled slightly, and then found Barnes’ hand sneaking across to her own. 

Catching her breath, she looked down at where it covered her own, splayed over the booth seat. She looked up into blue eyes that bored into her own, and then she twisted her hand up so that her fingers intertwined with his. She squeezed, gently, and he smiled then, a proper full smile that opened up his face entirely. 

“Come with me if you want to live,” he whispered, leaning forward and brushing his lips against her ear briefly as he spoke, before pulling back and tugging her with him out of the booth. Darcy had no time to do anything but follow his lead, moving fast across the restaurant and ducking behind pillars, tables and one bemused waiter who did not let a laughing brunette and a solid slab of super soldier wobble any of the five full glasses balanced on his serving tray. 

“Hey, they really are good here-” Darcy noted breathlessly, impressed as she tossed her head and skirted around the waiter, and then Barnes was pushing open swinging doors and pulling her with him into the kitchen. Steam burst in front of them and he hauled her to one side, the noise and bustle half covering their movements but not enough to stop the chef yelling in their direction. 

She stumbled a little, tripping on her heels and grasping at the edge of her dress where it slit up her thigh, pulling it out of the way so that she could move more freely, and Barnes’ arm was suddenly around her, keeping her upright and guiding her around a stainless steel counter laden with bowls of hot soup. 

Darcy laughed out loud and Barnes grinned back at her, his hand still firmly entwined with her own, darting through the staff milling in the kitchen, the chef still shouting and cursing after them, a ladle raised in the air angrily. 

“This way-” Barnes huffed, and then they were falling through another door and into the night air, the heat and steam of the kitchen leaving droplets of sweat on them both. The door slammed shut behind them, the bustle of the kitchen suddenly turned off as though someone had flipped a switch, and the relative silence of the night fell upon them. 

The remains of a laugh she thought might have started when he’d grabbed at her hand and pulled her through the bar died on her lips as she stopped stock still and looked up at him, her chest heaving as she fought for breath. Barnes came to rest as well, just looking at her, and Darcy thought fleetingly that his eyes weren’t entirely blue as she’d thought, but flecked a little with green. 

It was an odd thought, but one that she was still musing on as he took a step closer to her. 

Darcy’s heart seemed to both stop and beat faster, which was an odd sensation and one that left her feeling not a little sick as she tilted her head up in order to keep meeting his gaze. His hand, still holding hers firmly, shifted upwards and hers moved with it. Darcy’s eyes dropped from his to focus on the way their fingers were locked together. 

Her head swam a little, and she thought she probably needed to schedule in a bit more exercise if a short run like that - albeit in five inch heels - was going to leave her all out of sorts like that. The way she was feeling was definitely related to their mad dash and the adrenaline that fuelled it, and in no part due to the way that Barnes squeezed her hand gently. 

He took another half step closer, and Darcy’s mind went blank, except for one thought. Barnes inclined his head toward her, close but not close, his shaggy dark hair falling forward. Darcy gazed up at the man in front of her, and blurted out the only thing that she could manage to string together. 

“How the hell do you know that reference?”

Barnes frowned, and took a step back. 

“Uh, what?”

Darcy carried on, although a version of her - possibly a Jane-mandated future Darcy, sent back in time through a lab- controlled wormhole to facepalm at all her lowest moments - was almost certainly stood to one side shaking her head fervently as she did so. 

“Come with me if you want to live?” she babbled, and he blinked at her. “Terminator, huh?”

“I, uh,” he responded, still hanging onto her hand but blinking more and more as he processed what she was saying. “Wilson made us watch it. Thought it was funny...” he trailed off a little and shrugged the other arm, the one that didn’t end in a hand that clung to hers, and Darcy opened her mouth to say something, anything, except-

“Barnes? Thought you were going to wallow in self-pity?”

A voice came out of the darkness and a hand clapped onto Barnes’ shoulder. The dark haired man grimaced, face falling slightly and Darcy came face to face with the man she knew to be called Sam Wilson. 

To his credit, his face also dropped, apparently not having seen her standing in front of Barnes. His hand clenched on Barnes’ shoulder, though it was his left one and judging from the look on his face, the movement hurt his hand more than it did anything to Barnes’ shoulder. 

“Um-” Sam began. 

“I should really get to bed,” Darcy said hastily, pulling back with reluctance and letting her hand slip from where Barnes’ held it. She took a step backwards and glanced behind her at the hotel, looming above. “S’getting late, gotta make that trip back to New York tomorrow morning,” she explained, fiddling with the strap to her purse as she spoke. 

Barnes nodded, and Darcy fled. 

“Shit, man,” Sam said sincerely, and Bucky looked at him. 

“Yeah,” he said, clapping a hand to Sam’s shoulder. “You owe me. Definitely means next mission you have to sleep on the floor.”


	8. Chapter Eight

“So what happened to you last night? You look-”

“I didn't sleep all that much,” Darcy said tiredly, as her boss and best friend accosted her in the line for breakfast the next morning. Darcy had thrown on ripped jeans and a hoodie that had seen about a decade’s worth of better days, and wandered downstairs on autopilot. She’d managed to take off most of the makeup she’d slapped on the night before, after waking up with a decent imprint of her face on the hotel pillow, and only one false eyelash still attached. 

She still had no idea where the other one had gone. 

She hoped that she’d not lost it during her time with Barnes at the hotel bar.

She had absolutely no way of knowing. 

“Wait, rewind,” Jane stepped up closer to her as they both shuffled forward in the breakfast line, trays in hand. The other girl looked intrigued in a way Darcy had only really seen before when she was looking at something science related. “Why precisely did you not get enough sleep?”

“Uh uh, take it back a few paces there, not even remotely close to what you're thinking,” Darcy yawned, clutching onto her tray one-handed and padding forward, coming to a halt half a pace later behind a particularly large woman and her equally large husband, who were just a shade too loud in their discussion about sightseeing for Darcy’s liking. She sighed and turned back to Jane, who was still looking interested. 

“Just kept awake by reminiscing over the sheer force of my own social awkwardness.”

“What the hell did you do this time?” Jane asked with a disbelieving shake of her head, reaching forward and scooping a generous helping of scrambled egg onto her plate. Darcy’s stomach turned slightly looking at the yellow heap, and she spun on her heel toward the bacon instead. 

“Wound up sharing a cab with the guy I was getting a cab away from, then bumped into the other guy I've been trying to avoid, then ended up stuck at the hotel bar with Barnes, Scott and the girl he dumped me for.” Darcy tossed over her shoulder as some form of explanation, heaping bacon onto her own plate, balancing the tray on her knee as she negotiated the tongs. 

Jane stared at her, fascinated.

“Are you absolutely sure that you're not actually the main character in a romantic comedy?”

“I wish,” Darcy snorted. “If I was in one at all, I'd be the quirky best friend who invariably gets all the best lines but none of the men.” They both grabbed coffee, Darcy snaffling a handful of sugar whilst Jane snatched up the creamer, then slipped into empty chairs at a table next to the wall. 

“You know, you could sell this stuff,” Jane said, conversationally, spearing a sausage with her fork and dabbing it into a heap of ketchup. “Really,” she mumbled around her mouthful, snapping the tops off two creamer pots and nudging one toward Darcy as she chewed. “It’s like gold. You’re like our generation’s Bridget Jones.”

“I don’t wanna be Bridget Jones,” Darcy objected, voice thick as she chewed down on a rasher of bacon. “I wanna be… I don't even know what I wanna be,” she paused, giving Jane a lopsided shrug as she considered. “Me, I guess, just… Better at it.” 

She appreciated Jane’s interest, and was more than aware the other girl was just trying to cheer her up, but a night spent tossing and turning, unable to get the image of Bucky Barnes’ blue eyes out of her head had left her less than social. She halved the mound of sugar packets and pushed one heap across the table at Jane, who groaned in thanks and snatched them up. 

“What happened with you last night, anyway?”

Jane's face darkened from across the table, and she ripped the top of one of the sugar packets as though she were beheading it. Darcy, nose firmly over her own mug of coffee, watched warily as Jane dumped the contents in her own mug and stirred it violently. 

“Thor drank a whole case of beer, and then ate an entire tray of hors d'oeuvres to himself.”

“Well I've done that before,” Darcy said mildly, scooping bacon into the little pile of ketchup she’d liberally squirted onto the edge of the plate.

“Not whilst using the platter itself as a funnel,” Jane answered despairingly, one hand pressed to the side of her face as the other curled around her coffee mug, inhaling the fumes like a lifeline. “And not in front of an audience.”

“Lady, you don’t know everything about me,” Darcy said pointedly, raising an eyebrow at her boss from the other side of the breakfast table and tossing her brunette hair over one shoulder comically. Jane laughed, and the girls fell into a companionable silence as they finished the rest of their breakfast. 

Darcy swallowed down what was left, draining the last dregs of the coffee before peering suspiciously into the bottom of the mug as though it might be lying to her about how much it had left to offer, before telling Jane she’d meet her out front for the journey back to New York. Jane, for her part, mumbled something unintelligible in response, mind more than half on an equation she thought she might have dreamed the night before. 

Eventually, she finished, pushing her chair back with a sigh and made her way across the breakfast room. 

Jane passed by the tall black man sat slumped in a chair at the corner table, then back tracked her steps and stood looking at him critically, hands on her hips. He looked up at her a little blearily, but without the energy to really call her out. 

“You're Sam Wilson.”

“Mainly I'm tired,” he concluded with a slight flavour of suspicion in the face of her accusation, and a wide yawn, only just covered by one large hand. “But then again, sleeping on the floor all night will do that to a man.” 

The petite brunette woman in front of him narrowed her eyes briefly, then thrust out a hand toward him. 

“I'm Jane, Jane-”

“Jane Foster,” he said with a dawning look of recognition creeping over his face, sitting up a little straighter and grasping her hand, pumping it up and down in a handshake that lasted a little too long for comfort. “The Jane Foster who's-”

“Darcy’s friend, yeah,” Jane said impatiently, extracting her hand from his grip. 

“I was gonna go with Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist, but if the cap fits,” Sam shrugged, and kicked out the chair opposite him with one long leg, inviting her with a silent hand to sit down.

“Well, both are true if you want to be accurate about it,” Jane conceded, dropping herself into the spare chair and fixing him with a serious look as she did so. “I'm more interested in your friend right now though.”

“Would that be tall, blond and patriotic, or dark, miserable and brooding?” Sam asked, tearing apart a bread roll as he spoke. He then paused a moment, head tilted to one side before continuing. “Though if you ever tell the second one I referred to him as a friend, I'm gonna have to shove you in one of your own wormholes.”

“The latter,” Jane said, ignoring the rest of what he had to say. “What's his deal?”

“Aside from a lifetime’s worth of guilt and more need for atonement than the entire Catholic Church?” Sam joked with a shake of his head. Barnes had more going on in his own head than a small Eastern European country, and Sam - at Steve’s earnest request - had done his level best with the man to try and wriggle some of it away from him. 

He’d had, it was fair to say, somewhat limited success. 

“He's gone on your girl, no doubt,” Sam said slowly. “And I feel like you have something in mind for this? Something that’s gonna make me feel like an honorary girl for getting involved?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a girl,” Jane responded pointedly. “And there is definitely something you can do for me.”

\--------

“Sorry, Darce,” Jane said, leaning forward and barring the girl as she leaned forward to open the passenger door of the little red car. Darcy pulled back and regarded her friend, who wore an expression that looked about as far from sorry as Darcy usually did herself.

“What exactly do you mean, sorry?” Darcy asked suspiciously, readjusting her duffel bag onto her shoulder. Jane gave her back a one armed shrug that was probably meant to approximate some kind of reticence. Unfortunately for Jane, it was paired with a tiny smirk that did nothing to endear her to Darcy.

“Car’s full,” Jane explained, without actually explaining anything at all.

“Car is not full,” Darcy insisted, staring at her friend and trying to connect dots that were resolutely refusing to come together. “Car absolutely contains Darcy.”

“Car contains Sam Wilson,” the man in question said brightly, stepping up between the two girls as they faced off at each other. Darcy turned toward him slowly, a delicate spin on one foot that had her glaring up at him whilst she clutched at the strap of her bag on her shoulder.

“Tell me, is Sam Wilson a superhero?” She asked tartly, then continued on before he had a chance to answer her. “Because if so, I think his superpower is ‘getting in the goddamned way’.” 

Sam for his part just gave her a wide mouthed grin, before leaning around her and jerking the car door open. Darcy yelped as he shifted around her in one easy movement and slid into the back seat, twisting the bag off his shoulder and positioning it between his knees. Darcy turned to Jane with an injured look on her face. 

“Why are you doing this to me? Haven't I suffered enough?”

“What's going on?” Steve wandered towards them, car keys in one hand and a large duffel bag of his own slung over the opposite shoulder, a bemused expression on his broad face as he took in the slightly murderous one on Darcy’s. 

“You’re coming with us,” Jane said brightly, at roughly the same time that Darcy herself said the exact opposite, followed shortly by a creative slew of cursing under her breath and a neatly aimed kick that caught Jane in the ankle. 

Steve took a step back and glanced at Sam who cracked the car window a jot and returned a look that plainly told him to just roll with it. The captain turned on his heel back to the girls in front of him, engaged in a silent conversation of which he could decipher just enough that he thought Sam - grinning at him from the relative safety of the car - was getting the better end of whatever deal was going on. 

“And you are..?” He said from the corner of his mouth at Sam. 

“The best damn bro your buddy's never had,” The other man replied sagely, and closed the window again. 

“Get in the car, Steve,” Jane said sharply, and Darcy huffed loudly. Steve gave her an apologetic look and moved around the car to the other side, sliding in next to Sam and shutting the door carefully. The car squeaked and groaned under the additional weight, the ancient station wagon silently agreeing with Darcy that it would have much preferred her as a passenger. 

Words escaped her as she stared back at the other woman. 

“Jane?” 

Both girls turned slightly as the world turned dark for them, squinting up at the looming figure of Thor. Broad, good-natured and smiling easily at the pair of them, he faltered as he took in the falsely bright grin on Jane’s face and the counter-weight thundercloud dancing over Darcy. 

“Car, Thor.”

The big man half turned toward Darcy as if to hug her goodbye, looked more closely at the expression on her face and opted instead to obediently open the passenger door and slide in, the car groaning out a loud protest under the weight of yet another large male body. The bumper scraped along the gravel as the car bounced downwards, before heroically pushing back up. 

Darcy fought the urge to kick the wheel arch, hard, as Jane clapped her on the shoulder and got into the driver’s seat. It was an urge that only intensified as she heard from behind her the slow approach of tyres on the gravel drive, and knew who it was she’d be spending the ride home with. 

\-------

“That'll give them some time to talk.” Jane said with a large degree of satisfaction as she gripped the wheel and glanced in the rear view mirror. Bucky had pulled up in his own car, coming to a halt by the brunette who was still staring after their own moving car. 

“It's only a four and a half hour trip, Jane.” Sam piped up from the back seat. Steve was twisted, peering out of the back window at the people they were leaving behind. Thor was humming quietly to himself as he opened a packet of Gummy Bears.

“It is,” Jane agreed, hitting the blinker and checking her side mirror before continuing. “Assuming your car has one of these.” With that, she pulled open the glove compartment with her right hand, the left still on the steering wheel, and presented the small part. 

“You are a devious woman,” Sam said, impressed.

“How else did you think I earned that Nobel Prize?”

\------

“Hello,” Barnes said quietly, giving her a half glance from his side of the car that ended almost as quickly as it began. He’d pulled up along side her and parked, unfolding long legs and standing. He rested one arm over the top of the open door as he looked at her. 

“Hi,” Darcy answered, feeling her heart thud painfully in her chest. She suddenly wished that she’d made more of an effort with what she was wearing, and that she’d actually brushed her hair rather than flinging her comb into the depths of her bag under the assumption she was only going to end up with sweet wrappers in it. 

Bucky gave her a tentative smile, the car feeling like an ocean between them, and her staring dumbly right back at him across it. He broke away first, swallowing and looking after the small fug cloud that followed Jane’s car up the sweeping driveway to the main road. 

“Do I wanna know why your friend forced Wilson and Steve into her car?”

“Probably not,” Darcy said, kicking the ground and noticing for the first time that the front of her left sneaker was peeling away from the sole. 

“I think I can guess,” he said, and pulled open his own car door wider, throwing his bag from the passenger seat to the back of the car. He straightened, then held a hand out for her bag as well. Darcy shucked it from her shoulder and passed it to him over the hood of the car. That too bounced onto the backseat. 

“What do you guess?” Darcy asked, not really wanting to know the answer but finding her mouth open and asking the damn question before her brain caught up with it. She found her feet walking her around the front of the car, coming to a stop on the other side of the open car door. Barnes gave her a crooked little half smile, and rested his frame on the door, leaning over it toward her. 

“Well, I figure she wants to force us to spend some time together, seeing as she unplugged the trans shifter position sensor. Reckon that would’ve stuck us here for a while if I hadn’t watched her do it.”

“She did what?” Darcy snapped, stepping forward. Barnes laughed. 

“Unfortunately for her, I carry replacements,” he said, jerking his head toward the trunk. “And when I spotted her fiddling under the hood earlier, I might've…” He trailed off and regarded Darcy a moment, before shrugging. 

“Might've …?” Darcy prompted.

“Retaliated.” 

“Do I wanna know how?” She asked, realising that she did in fact very much want to know. Bucky coughed and ducked his head, his right hand going to the back of his neck. If she didn’t know better, Darcy would almost swear there was a dusting of pink across his cheeks. 

“Probably best I don’t tell you,” he answered, with a slightly sheepish glance at her. “Plausible deniability and all that.”

“It won’t hurt ‘em,” Bucky rushed on, misinterpreting the look on her face. “And Steve’s with them, he’ll be able to fix it no trouble. It’s an old trick we used to play in the Army, needed a bit of adapting for a modern car, but-”

“Don’t worry, I’m more than down with Jane getting what’s coming to her,” Darcy cut him off, rolling her eyes and laughing a little as she did so. 

“Spendin’ time with me that bad, huh?” Bucky said wryly, and his fingers drummed on the edge of the car door. Before Darcy could correct him, he’d slipped himself into the driver’s seat and was opening the passenger door for her from the inside. Stretched across the car with his t-shirt riding up and a flash of bare skin winking at her where his pants were slung low on his hips, Bucky nudged the door open before righting himself. 

He pushed a hand back through his hair and twisted the key in the ignition. 

Darcy swallowed. 

It was going to be a long ride back to New York.


	9. Chapter Nine

“Is it just me, or does it feel like we’ve been in this car for, like, a year?” 

Darcy grumbled slightly, shifting uncomfortably in her seat and wishing she could stretch her legs out further. She was hardly the tallest person in the vehicle, and yet there was something about being confined to the one seat that made her muscles ache just thinking about it, let alone being in it. 

Bucky gave her a sidelong glance from his position in the driver’s seat. 

“It just feels like a year,” he said evenly, one hand on the steering wheel and the other crooked on the open window to his left. Frustratingly, the dark-haired man appeared totally at ease with the situation, despite the fact that they had been crawling in the traffic tail back for what seemed like an eternity. 

“But I can assure you we’ve only been sat in this traffic jam since October 2016.”

Darcy huffed out a slightly reluctant puff of laughter, directed mostly to her chest and allowing herself the briefest of moments to rake her eyes over the man sat next to her. He’d rolled up the sleeves on his t-shirt, exposing his biceps - one flesh and pink, the other brushed metal - and she was having a tough time convincing herself not to stare at them. 

“At least we passed Jane’s car,” she noted, half under her breath and turning her head to stare out of the window at the landscape. The landscape which consisted mostly of other cars containing similarly bored people. A kid in a blue Toyota pick-up two cars over stuck his tongue out, and Darcy responded in kind. 

To her left, Bucky snorted. 

They’d passed Jane, alright. They’d passed Jane staring in disbelief at her unresponsive car, pulled over in the hard shoulder. Bucky had given Sam a small wave as they’d sailed past, and for his part Wilson had remained with his middle finger in the upright position in the rear-view mirror until he became a dot on the horizon.

Bucky slung her another side-long look, one that lasted significantly longer than the one she’d given him. 

“You wanna stop?”

Darcy jerked her head back from the window to look at him, eyes narrowing as she regarded him. 

“No. Why? Do you?”

“You look antsy,” he observed, and Darcy forced her left foot to stop tapping against the floor of the car. Bucky merely raised an eyebrow in response, and she pulled a face right back at him, just about stopping herself from sticking her tongue out at him like the mature responsible adult she undoubtedly was. 

“Why doesn’t this bother you?” She said instead, gesturing at the long line of cars in front of them. He shrugged. 

“I was a sniper, Darcy,” he said, clear blue eyes staring out in front of him, watching for the slightest movement of the car in front to begin edging forward again. “You’re trained to remain in one place for a long time. This isn’t much. At least it’s comfortable.”

“Wasn’t it boring?” Darcy asked, curious. She shifted in her seat, bringing one leg up onto the seat and wrapping her arms around the bent limb. She rested her chin on top of her knee and tilted her head toward him, dark tangle of curls framing her face as she did so. 

He shrugged again, eyes still on the road. 

“S’just the job,” Bucky said quietly. He turned his head to her briefly, eyes narrowing as he moved. Darcy hugged her knee to her chest more tightly. “You know, I don’t think this is the conversation your friend had in mind when she forced us into the same car for hours on end.”

Darcy coloured instantly, cheeks pinking as she fought to find some words to answer that. As she struggled, too many words rushing to mind and being discarded all at once, she was saved from having to respond by a large bang.

She turned to the man beside her with wild eyes. 

“What was that?”

Bucky grimaced. “Nothing good.”

He guided the car, now stuttering and jumping underneath them, over to the hard shoulder where it whined to a stop. As Bucky shut down the engine, a large plume of dark grey smoke began to billow from under the hood. Bucky, head popping up from behind the steering wheel as he spotted it, swore creatively and leaped out of the car. 

Darcy, unsure, followed. 

“Can you fix it?” She asked hopefully, wrapping her arms around herself and hugging tightly, her sweatshirt cuffs dangling over her hands as she approached the hood hesitantly. Bucky, bent at the waist and only the lower half of him visible between the smoke and the popped hood, grunted unintelligibly in response. 

She waited, feeling duty bound to stand at the front of the car whilst he fiddled about under the hood, alternatively cursing and sighing in equal measure. Darcy turned to watch the slow procession of vehicles that passed their broken down and sad looking car, meeting the eyes of people who were clearly sending up prayers of thanks that it wasn’t them on the hard shoulder.

Darcy blew out her cheeks, holding the breath, then exhaled hard before turning back to Bucky who had straightened finally. He wiped the back of his flesh hand against his forehead, leaving a dark grease smear across it. His metal hand he brushed against his jeans, dirtying them also. Darcy stared for a second, then mentally shook herself into speech. 

“You know what this is, right?” 

He glanced at her, eyes sliding from the smoking engine to the girl beside him. He tilted his head, dark hair curling against his cheek as he looked across. She stared back at him before continuing. “This is karma. For breaking Jane’s car.”

Bucky huffed out something that wasn’t quite close enough to laughter for comfort, using the bottom of his t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his eyes, and exposing a good deal of stomach in the process. A long, loud honk from one of the passing cars sounded and Darcy put a hand over her mouth as Bucky looked up, affronted by the sound. 

“Can you fix it?”

“Not without a new catalytic converter,” he said ruefully, standing back and letting the hood drop back into place. “You got one of those hidden in that duffel bag of yours?”

“I’m not sure I even really know what that is,” Darcy answered mournfully. 

“Right, well,” he said, tousling the back of his head with one hand, the stretch pulling his shirt up as he moved. “We’re gonna need to find a place.”

“A what now?”

Darcy turned to the man beside her with wide eyes, mouth opening slightly as she glanced up and down the barren highway. Bucky shrugged once more in response, reading her thoughts. 

“It's that or we sleep in the car.”

\----------

“Okay, miss, you're in 237 and sir - right next door. 238.”

The wholly disinterested motel clerk barely glanced up at them as he shoved the keys across the counter. It was the only place they could find, flickering neon signs and all, trudging along the hard shoulder with bags slung across their shoulders, the car sitting mournfully behind them as it grew smaller and smaller in the distance. 

Darcy had worried about leaving it, until Bucky asked pointedly how in the hell anyone would steal it if they themselves were unable to get it moving. Reluctantly, she’d been forced to acknowledge the logic behind that one. 

“Thanks,” Bucky said, redundantly as the clerk had shifted his entire attention back to the 14” flickering television screen in front of him. The dark-haired man frowned slightly, but grabbed at the keys anyway and stepped back, gesturing to Darcy to walk ahead of him. 

“Guess it’s this way,” he murmured from behind her, as she turned left from the small space that passed for the motel reception, and began to climb the steps to the second level. The building was a u-shape, arranged around a sad looking concrete swimming pool. Patchy astro-turf was arranged haphazardly around the edge, dotted here and there with the odd broken plastic chair. One lone umbrella stood to the left, lurching awkwardly backwards at a strange angle. 

“Is it just me or does this place look like the Bates motel?” Darcy said out of the corner of her mouth.

“I don't know what that is,” Bucky replied, shrugging.

“Nothing good,” Darcy said grimly, sidestepping what looked a whole lot like the body of a particularly large rat. Bucky seemed singularly unbothered by his surroundings, and she supposed that a man who was essentially kept in storage for the best part of seventy years probably didn’t care an awful lot about a cheap motel. 

“Well, this is me,” she said awkwardly, coming to an abrupt halt in front of a door that proudly proclaimed it was 23. The missing brass ‘7’ was evident by its absence, the wood underneath slightly less weather-beaten than the rest of it. A barely lighter beige than the rest of the aged wood. Bucky nodded, and stepped around her to his own door. 

Grimacing, Darcy turned the key and put her shoulder to the door when it didn’t open at first push. A hefty shove saw her falling into the room when it suddenly gave way. The room was dim and only brightened slightly when she hit the lights. 

Dumping her duffel bag on the bed, Darcy made a slow spin on the spot to take in the whole of the room. The wallpaper - potentially once bright - peeled badly in several spots, and the floor dipped badly where she stood. The carpet was both patterned and threadbare, the underlay showing through where the bed ended. 

She closed her eyes and counted to five, simultaneously reminding herself that it was only for a night and that she’d definitely stayed in worse when she was still a student struggling for the last few credits to pass her college course. 

“Please don’t be blood-stained, please don’t be blood-stained,” she chanted to herself under her breath as she opened the door to the bathroom gingerly, pushing at it with her fingertips and leaning away from the doorway in trepidation. 

It wasn’t blood-stained. That was about as much as could be said in positivity for it, but it was, at least, not blood-stained. Not that Darcy would have bet against the theory that people hadn’t died in it, but at least it had been cleaned up afterwards.

She cranked the tap and, after a second or so of hesitation during which Darcy imagined all sorts of possibilities, it spit out clear water. She blinked in surprise, then shrugged. 

“Hey, karma, this is me not looking a gift horse in the mouth,” she announced to the room brightly. The pipes responded by making a deep, ominous, groaning sound that echoed against the tiles. “Okay, forget I mentioned it,” she said quickly, looking around in alarm. 

Darcy scrubbed her teeth quickly and, checking behind the shower curtain briefly, opted that a strip-wash at the basin was probably the lesser of two evils. She pulled off the sweatshirt she’d been wearing for what felt like the best part of a year, and, sniffing it gingerly, pulled a face and dropped it to the floor. 

“So glad I’ve not been cooped up in a small space with a guy who has a heightened sense of everything,” she grumbled to her reflection, who merely looked back at her despairingly. Darcy wriggled out of her jeans and kicked them into the corner, followed shortly by socks, panties, t-shirt and bra. Tying up her long hair into the sort of messy bun that would qualify for a Pinterest fail, the girl made quick work of getting herself clean. 

Scooping up the small pile of clothes, she padded back into the bedroom and pulled on her sleepwear. Yawning behind one hand, she flicked through the three messages on her phone. Two from Jane, and the third a picture message she assumed was an accidental send from Thor, as all she could see was a blur of blond hair and what she thought - read, hoped - was part of his thumb. 

Darcy sighed and threw herself into the bed, instantly wishing that she hadn’t, the springs giving an almighty creak and something twanging painfully into the small of her back, making her sit up sharply and yelp with indignation. 

“Darcy? You okay?” 

“Buck- Bucky?” She asked aloud, confused, as she rubbed the sore spot on her lower back. With the other hand Darcy shoved back hair behind her left ear, glancing about herself before realising where the voice was coming from. “Wow, these walls really are paper-thin.”

“Yeah,” came his dry response through the wall. “You should be glad you’re in there and not this room.”

“How comes?”

“Let’s just say the guy on the other side is kinda lonely tonight.”

Darcy chuckled, grimacing slightly at the thought of it as she did so, settling back into the bed more carefully than before, arranging the pillows up behind her back and drawing the covers up over her knees. She sat back against the wall, imagining that perhaps, on the other side, Bucky was making the same motion on his side. 

Something in the centre of her chest made a sudden tight clench at the thought of it, and she tried to swallow the feeling away, that pain-that-wasn’t-quite-a-pain that seized her ribs and wouldn’t let go fully. She shook her head, not able to address that feeling that late hour. 

“Goodnight, Bucky,” she managed instead, marvelling at the steady timbre of her voice as she said it. “Sweet dreams.”

There was no response from the other side of the wall, and Darcy bit down hard on her lower lip before working her way down into the bed and all but pulling the covers over her head. The bed dipped alarmingly as she shifted, wriggling to find some comfortable space that she could try to fit into, and forget about ridiculous thoughts until the morning broke and brought with it more inevitable complications. 

The room fell silent, and Darcy lay on her back staring at the damp stains on the ceiling. 

“Last night, Darcy...” 

The low voice came out of nowhere, and she tensed where she lay, fighting her way back upright with an attempt at a minimal amount of noise in doing so. 

“Uhuh?” She said, trying not to sound to eager in finding out the rest of the sentence. The silence that stretched out after it seemed to last an age, and she started to wonder if she’d even dreamed him speaking again, and further whether her response had been audible or no. 

“You looked beautiful.”

Darcy’s heart caught in the back of her throat, and she choked it back, swallowing down the heat that instantly jumped to her cheeks, before she was able to make any kind of response. Not knowing quite how to answer, she spluttered out an awkward laugh, drawing her knees up under the moth-eaten blanket and pulling them to her chest. 

“Makes a change from the lab assistant get up, huh?” She said weakly.

Another silence descended, and Darcy kicked herself for not saying something like ‘thank you’ instead. She wriggled her toes under the covers, fingertips drumming against the worn mattress until the words welled up inside her and burst from her mouth without her being able to stop them. 

“You didn’t look all that awful yourself, you know,” she said quietly to the wall, the paisley-patterned paper peeling badly as she laid her cheek against it. She winced as the words came out, instantly wishing she’d not said them - however true they were - and wholly unable to prevent herself from continuing onwards. 

“Maybe you should wear a suit every day.”

She could hear a deep snort in response from the other side of the wall. 

“Monkey suits ain’t really my thing,” Bucky answered after a short pause. “I only ever wore one before for-” he broke off, and Darcy felt a shift in the conversation that she couldn’t understand, a break in his voice that told her he wasn’t quite alright. 

“Bucky?” She asked softly, shifting in the bed and wincing as the springs creaked loudly underneath her. Darcy rest first the palm of her hand against the wall, and then her head, listening intently for sounds of movement on the other side.

“For Steve’s mother,” he said shortly, and there was a low thump against the wall that suggested he’d rolled his head back against it as he sat up in bed. “For her funeral. S’gotta be the only time in my life I wore a suit before tonight.”

He delivered it in an almost ironic fashion, but underneath the false bravado she could hear the emotion threaded through it. Darcy closed her eyes and rolled her head back against the wall in an approximation of what she’d imagined him doing. The Winter Soldier came with a blood-red mythology wrapped around him, but Darcy had only ever known Bucky Barnes, and she’d seen his raw emotion before. 

The way that he’d gazed up at Howard Stark’s not-so-flying car, and the stars in his eyes as he’d explained to her how he’d seen it in action back in 1943. The look on his face as he’d turned away from the punch ball machine, clenching his left hand into a metallic fist. 

With barely a second thought, she slipped out of bed and to the door, hopping from one bare foot to the other, the sweater she was wearing hanging low on her bare thighs where they covered the pyjama shorts she’d thrown on. Snatching up the key, she pulled her own door closed and locked it, before moving five paces down to the next room. 

Darcy thumped at the door, once, twice and had her fist raised for a third time when the door opened to a bare-chested and somewhat bemused looking Bucky. His dark hair was tousled, and she could see behind him the ruffled covers where he’d thrown them back to get out of bed.

“What’s wrong?” 

“Uh,” she faltered in response, arms wrapped around herself, glancing down the hallway for inspiration. The truth was that the broken sound to his voice had propelled her to this point, wanting nothing more than to put her arms around him and hug tightly. 

Now that she was stood in front of him, dressed only in her nightwear and gooseflesh rapidly rising on her bare legs where the cool night air brushed across it, Darcy reflected that perhaps she should have left him to it. 

She swallowed, hard. 

“There was a spider.”

He looked at her blankly. 

“Massive. Huge. The type where you’re not so confident that even a hardback version of War & Peace would be enough to finish the job, you know?” Darcy rambled in the face of his silence, shifting from one nervous foot to the other, fingertips digging into the soft material of the sweater that was bunching up around her waist under her grip. 

“You want me to…?” He gestured in the general direction of her room, blue eyes searching as he looked from her to the wall next to him. 

“To what?” 

“You know.” Bucky mimed catching something large in his hands, before shrugging at her. 

“You can’t go back in there,” Darcy said quickly. He looked lost, gazing back at her, and she rushed on, the words spilling out somehow as she stood there in front of him with no clue how to proceed properly like a normal human being. “It’s a category three. Maybe even a category four. That’s a whole situation right there. Some kind of red alert type thing.”

“Right,” was all he could manage, and she couldn’t blame him for that. Bucky took a step back, and ran a hand through his hair, mussing it further than it already was. He inhaled sharply. “So you… You need to stay here?”

Darcy nodded mutely, eyes wide as she stared up at him. Wordlessly, he stepped back even further, widening the space between them, and gestured to the rest of the room. The little brunette, fingers still gripping at the knitted sweatshirt she was wearing, padded past him quietly. 

The sound of the door shutting behind her was louder than anything else, a huge deafening boom that ricocheted around the walls of the small hotel room, even though it was in reality just the normal shutting as of any door. Darcy turned her head back over her shoulder, dark curls tumbling down her back and framing her face in the moonlight. Bucky had not thought to draw the blinds on his window, and she was illuminated in the light that streamed through. 

He stepped forward and cleared his throat, attempting to shove his hands into pockets that didn’t exist in his pyjama pants. 

“You, uh, you want me to stay on the floor?”

She stared at him blankly. 

“Yeah, Bucky, I want to invite myself into your room and then make you sleep on the floor.”

He stared back at her, mouth opened as though he had something to say but the words wouldn’t quite come to his call. Apparently realising the situation, Bucky snapped his jaw shut and instead pulled back the covers on the bed and slipped underneath them. 

Darcy, sucking in a deep breath of her own, somehow tripped over her own feet all the way around to the other side of the bed - which managed to feel at the same time both enormously huge and the smallest space in the history of the world - and tumbled onto it. 

Bucky settled back carefully, laying his head onto the pillows and raising his right arm so that she could shift herself under it and lay her own head onto his chest. She could feel his heart hammering against her ear drum, and felt grateful that he wasn’t in a position to hear the way her own was racing. Gently he let his arm drop around her, shifting awkwardly until Darcy threaded her fingers into his own and guided him to rest over her waist.

The room was silent, save for the thumping of two separate heartbeats in the darkness.   
And then-

“Reckon my friend next door is gonna be jealous at breakfast tomorrow.”


End file.
